“Carbon dioxide molecules are sensitive tracers of the story of planet formation,” mentioned Mike Line, an affiliate professor in Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, within the information launch. Line is a member of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science staff, which performed the investigation.
The staff made the carbon dioxide commentary utilizing the telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph — one in all Webb’s 4 scientific devices — to watch WASP-39b’s environment. Their analysis is a part of the Early Release Science Program, an initiative designed to supply information from the telescope to the exoplanet analysis group as quickly as attainable, guiding additional scientific examine and discovery.
This newest discovering has been accepted for publication within the journal Nature.
“By measuring this carbon dioxide feature, we can determine how much solid versus how much gaseous material was used to form this gas giant planet,” Line added. “In the coming decade, JWST will make this measurement for a variety of planets, providing insight into the details of how planets form and the uniqueness of our own solar system.”
A brand new period in exoplanet analysis
In the captured spectrum of the planet’s environment, the researchers noticed a small hill between 4.1 and 4.6 microns — a “clear signal of carbon dioxide,” mentioned staff chief Natalie Batalha, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics on the University of California at Santa Cruz, within the launch. (A micron is a unit of size equal to 1 millionth of a meter.)
“Depending on the atmosphere’s composition, thickness, and cloudiness, it absorbs some colors of light more than others — making the planet appear larger,” mentioned staff member Munazza Alam, a postdoctoral fellow within the Earth & Planets Laboratory on the Carnegie Institution for Science. “We can analyze these miniscule differences in the size of the planet to reveal the atmosphere’s chemical makeup.”
Access to this a part of the sunshine spectrum — which the Webb telescope makes attainable — is essential for measuring abundances of gases corresponding to methane and water, in addition to carbon dioxide, that are thought to exist in lots of exoplanets, based on NASA. Because particular person gases take up totally different mixtures of colours, researchers can study “small differences in brightness of the transmitted light across a spectrum of wavelengths to determine exactly what an atmosphere is made of,” based on NASA.
Previously, NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer telescopes found water vapor, sodium and potassium within the planet’s environment. “Previous observations of this planet with Hubble and Spitzer had given us tantalizing hints that carbon dioxide could be present,” Batalha mentioned. “The data from JWST showed an unequivocal carbon dioxide feature that was so prominent it was practically shouting at us.”
“As soon as the data appeared on my screen, the whopping carbon dioxide feature grabbed me,” mentioned staff member Zafar Rustamkulov, a graduate scholar of within the Morton Ok. Blaustein Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, in a information launch. “It was a special moment, crossing an important threshold in exoplanet sciences,” he added.
Discovered in 2011, WASP-39b’s mass is about the identical as Saturn’s and roughly a fourth of Jupiter’s, whereas its diameter is 1.3 occasions higher than Jupiter’s. Since the exoplanet orbits very near its star, it completes one circuit in barely over 4 Earth days.