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Article: Astronomy: man bites dog; planet heats its star.(This Week)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- January 17, 2004
- Author:
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Observing a sunlike star 90 light-years from Earth, astronomers have found evidence of an extraordinary role reversal. Whereas a star usually heats a planet, a closely orbiting planet appears to be, in this case, heating its star.
Observations suggest that once every 3.09 days, as it whips around a star called HD 179949, the planet generates a hot spot in the star's atmosphere. Evgenya Shkolnik of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and her colleagues announced the finding last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Atlanta.
The hot spot, she says, probably results from a magnetic interaction between the planet and the ...