HD80606b

Well what do you know, you learn something new every day.

So you know the scene in "The Chronicles Of Riddick" where the sunrise of the planet is bringing a fierce firestorm sweeping surface of the planet that they are trying to outrun....

Yeh you know the one, so I always thought whilst an exciting scene, was absolute BS.


Anyway so I'm watching a documentary on planets that have highly elliptical orbits (an orbit where the planet does not orbit in a near circle like earth but one where planets circle swinging close into their sun then far out in an egg shaped movement) there is a planet called HD80606b that has a highly elliptical orbit of 111 days and as it swings in close to it's sun, a firestorm of several thousand miles an hour sweeps in both directions from the 'sunny' side to the dark side.

After a period of about 12 hours this dissipates into an entire planet engulfing storm before cooling down again while it swings out the long lobe of it's 111 day orbit.

I guess that would mean you'd need to stay indoors that day or up the SPF factor on your sunscreen several thousand percent.


Cheers,
Dean