MOST

http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/most/news_100609.asp

Quote :

Alien Weather

The holy grail of astronomy is to find an Earth-like world orbiting another star. It seems that MOST has taken us one step further in reaching this historic goal by studying the most bizarre weather conditions ever seen on a far-off planet. Matthews and his team recently finished monitoring a gas giant planet orbiting the star HD 80606 located 190 light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The planet, dubbed HD 80606b is estimated to be about three times the mass of Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system. It has a 112-day-long year, circling a star similar to our Sun. However the planet has an extremely elongated orbit, taking it from a distance similar to Earth from our Sun, only to plunge twenty times closer in less than two months. As HD80606b swings so close to its Sun the planet's atmosphere heats up from 500 to 1200 degrees Celsius in a matter of days.
By looking at the tiny dip in starlight intensity as the planet transits in front of its parent star, MOST has been able to help determine how this alien planet's environment responds to these extreme conditions in a matter of hours not centuries. "We hope to couple our results with [NASA's infrared] Spitzer Space Telescope data to model the planet's atmosphere, clouds and even global climate change on another planet," says Matthews. Data like this could also help Earth scientists better understand atmospheric changes on our own planet and tweak their climate models as well.
Now MOST has begun hunting for transits of other exoplanets and already has its sights on about 40 targets which are thought to be super-Earths: rocky worlds with deep oceans and icy layers. While studying extreme weather patterns on alien planets may sound like science fiction, Mathews hints that there are more surprises in store. "Avatar's Pandora is actually quite a mundane world compared to the worlds MOST is discovering and studying."

MOST Public Data Archive
http://www.astro.ubc.ca/MOST/data/data.html

Candidate Target Stars - Extrasolar Planetary Systems
http://www.astro.ubc.ca/MOST/targetstars/candidates.html

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Canadas_MOST_astronomy_mission_comes_to_an_end_999.html

« …After more than ten years of studying the Universe, the Canadian Microvariability and Oscillation of STars (MOST) mission will come to an end on September 9, 2014, having exceeded its objectives… »