James Webb reveals an unprecedented exoplanet atmosphere
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has successfully revealed the composition of an exoplanet's atmosphere in unprecedented detail.
James Webb's powerful instruments picked up atoms and molecules, along with signs of energetic chemistry and clouds, that Hubble and Spitzer had not previously been able to detect when they observed the exoplanet.
The astronomers used Hot Saturn, a Saturn-mass planet orbiting a star about 700 light-years from Earth, known as WASP-39 b, to test the telescope's capabilities.
The telescope used infrared capabilities to pick up colored chemical signatures that are undetectable in visible light.
Described as a "game-changer", the new insights could reveal how this exoplanet formed from the disk of gas and dust surrounding the parent star in its younger years.
“We observed an exoplanet with multiple instruments that together provide a wide range of infrared spectrum and a set of chemical signatures that are inaccessible even at this time,” Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who contributed to the new study, said in a statement. the mission. Data like this is a game changer.”
WASP-39b orbits a host star eight times closer than the planet Mercury to our sun, which astronomers believe should bring a deeper understanding of how these processes affect the diversity of planets observed in the galaxy.
To uncover the secrets of the exoplanet, James Webb astronomer tracked the planet as it passed in front of its star, allowing some of its light to filter through its atmosphere.
NASA shared Tuesday's announcement: "Different types of chemicals in the atmosphere absorb different colors of the starlight spectrum, so the missing colors tell astronomers which molecules are present. By viewing the universe in infrared light, James Webb can pick up chemical signatures that cannot be detected in visible light.”
The telescope also detected a range of elements, including sodium (Na), potassium (K) and water vapor (H20) in the exoplanet's atmosphere.
This confirms what was previously captured through observations of space and ground telescopes, but James Webb found additional evidence of the presence of water in these longer wavelengths that could not be seen before.
Carbon dioxide was also found in the new data, which was detected at a higher resolution, providing twice as much as previously observed.
While carbon monoxide was detected, astronomers did not identify the presence of methane (CH4) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the data.
Hannah Wakeford, an astrophysicist at the University of Bristol in the UK, who researches exoplanet atmospheres, said in a statement: “We expected what the telescope would show us, but it was more accurate, more varied, and more beautiful than I actually thought it would be. Having such a complete list of chemical components in an exoplanet's atmosphere also gives scientists a glimpse into the abundances of different elements around each other, such as carbon-to-oxygen ratios or potassium-to-oxygen ratios.
This, in turn, provides insight into how this planet - and possibly others - formed from the disk of gas and dust surrounding the parent star in its younger years.”
WASP-39 b's chemical inventory suggests a history of the crashes and mergers of smaller bodies called planetesimals to create the planet.
"The abundance of sulfur relative to hydrogen indicates that the planet experienced a large accumulation of small planets that could deliver these components to the atmosphere," Kazumasa Ono, an exoplanet researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who worked on James Webb's data, explained in a statement. .
The data also indicates that oxygen is more abundant than carbon in the atmosphere. This likely indicates that WASP-39 b originally formed far from the central star.
Source: websites