James Webb reveals clouds on one of the hot planets of Jupiter
The James Webb Space Telescope has provided evidence of clouds on an exoplanet that was once thought to have a perfectly clear sky.
Hot Jupiters are a class of gas giant exoplanets that are physically similar to Jupiter but have very short orbital periods due to their close proximity to their stars and high surface atmospheric temperatures, making their unofficial name "hot Jupiters".
Returning to the news, NASA released, as part of the first set of scientific data obtained from the James Webb Space Telescope, the transmission spectrum of WASP-96b, an exoplanet located 1,150 light-years away.
Exoplanet hot Jupiter WASP-96b is a gas giant orbiting near its star.
WASP stands for wide-angle planet search, and this method has used arrays of robotic cameras in the Canary Islands and South Africa; To discover nearly 200 exoplanets so far.
The transmission spectrum reveals particles in the planet's atmosphere as it passes or moves in front of its star from our perspective.
When starlight is filtered through a planet's atmosphere, molecules within the atmosphere absorb specific wavelengths of starlight; Which effectively prevents those wavelengths from reaching us.
This results in dark absorption lines, which are a type of molecular fingerprint that describes the chemical makeup of the atmosphere.
In the first batch of Webb telescope images, the spectrum is inverted so that it more easily shows where the most light has been blocked.
On this occasion, NASA officials said, in a statement, that while observing in red visible and infrared light, the James Webb Telescope detected the signature of water absorption in the atmosphere of WASP-96b, as well as evidence of clouds and a hazy sky; Clouds can mask some of the spectral signals of the molecules radiating beneath them.
Although, in 2018, Chile's Very Large Telescope detected such a strong signal of sodium in the atmosphere that astronomers concluded that WASP-96b had no clouds at all.
This finding has been supported ever since; Through recent observations made by the Magellan Badi Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
The contradictory results have left astronomers re-analyzing both the James Webb Telescope's observations and previous optical observations; To better understand the behavior of WASP-96b's atmosphere and the relationship between its molecular composition and cloud levels.
Although we may not know for sure if there are clouds on WASP-96b, we do know that there is no life as we know it on this planet.
WASP-96b is a puffy gas giant that orbits so close to its star that it takes only 3.4 Earth days to complete one orbit, and is heated to more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius). This heat causes the planet's atmosphere to swell.
It should be noted that this is not the first detection of water in the atmosphere of an exoplanet; In 2013, the Hubble Space Telescope revealed the presence of water on exoplanets.
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