According to NASA, the James Webb Space Telescope has for the first time found clear evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet not found in our solar system. This groundbreaking discovery has the potential to provide “important information about the composition and formation of the planet” and other smaller planets in the future.
The planet researchers detected with the Webb telescope is WASP-39 b, a gas giant orbiting a star 700 light-years away. In 2018, through the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes, NASA detected a large amount of water vapor on the planet along with traces of sodium and potassium. With a quarter of Jupiter’s mass but 1.3 times the size of Jupiter, scientists have described the exoplanet as a “hot Saturn”.
With JWST, researchers now have access to more powerful and sensitive infrared capabilities and were also able to pick up the signature of carbon dioxide. The detection of WASP-39b is part of JWST’s campaign to observe exoplanets. The effort is part of the Early Release Science program, which is designed to provide the exoplanet research community with robust data from Webb as soon as possible.
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“As soon as the data appeared on my screen, I was taken by the huge carbon dioxide feature,” said Zafar Rustamkulov, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Liberation Science team. anticipated by the JWST transiting exoplanet community, in the NASA statement. it was a special moment, crossing an important threshold in exoplanet science.”
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The discovery was made with Webb NIRSpec instrumenta highly sensitive spectrograph that can separate light rays into individual elements of the light spectrum.
Planetary scientists also hope to observe the atmospheres of smaller, rocky, Earth-sized planets using the powerful Webb Telescope.
Who knows what they will find.