Blueshift - March 3, 2009: There's No Place Like Home... Yet

HD 80606b would not be a fun place to live, with its high winds, intense storms, and temperatures thousands of degrees hotter than any region on Earth. This exoplanet goes on a wild ride around its host star, with an orbit that takes it extremely close - and then extremely far away. This sends the planet through rapid heating and cooling cycles that astronomers are keenly studying to learn more about planetary atmospheres and climate patterns. In this episode, we interviewed Dr. Drake Deming, a Goddard astronomer studying HD 80606b, about this extreme planet and what makes exoplanets so interesting and valuable to observe. Though it isn't a friendly place, this extreme planet may be a step along the way to finding another world much like our own.