A gas giant 520 light-years away has equatorial atmospheric motion approaching 33,000 kilometres per hour—around 16 times Neptune’s fastest winds. When announced in January 2025, it was the fastest pl
Astronomers have analyzed the atmospheric winds of the exoplanet WASP-127b, which reach speeds of 33,000 kilometres per hour. The study demonstrates how scientists can map weather patterns on distant planets using spectral analysis despite the inability to resolve the planet's disc.
Why it matters
Advancements in exoplanet atmospheric characterization improve our understanding of planetary science and the potential for life beyond our solar system.
WASP-127b's brief wind-speed record reveals how Doppler-shifted molecules can turn an unresolved exoplanet into the beginnings of a weather map.
For 28 days in early 2025, WASP-127b held one of planetary science’s most striking records. Atmospheric material around the equator of this distant gas giant was inferred to be moving at close to 9 kilometres per second, or approximately 33,000 kilometres per hour.
That is around 16 times the strongest winds commonly quoted for Neptune, the Solar System’s wind champion. It is fast enough to travel from Sydney to London in well under an hour, if there were a straight path and the moving gas somehow maintained its speed.
Then the record was overtaken. On 18 February 2025, only four weeks after the WASP-127b announcement, another observing team reported a faster equatorial flow in a different exoplanet’s atmosphere.
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