“Carbon dioxide molecules are sensitive tracers of planet formation history,” Mike Line, associate professor at Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, said in the news release. Line is a member of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science, which conducted the research. The team made the carbon dioxide observation using the telescope’s near-infrared spectrograph — one of Webb’s four science instruments — to observe WASP-39b’s atmosphere. Their research is part of the Early Release Science Program, an initiative designed to provide data from the telescope to the exoplanet research community as soon as possible, guiding further scientific study and discovery. This latest finding has been accepted for publication in the journal Nature. “By measuring this characteristic of carbon dioxide, we can determine how much solid versus how much gaseous material was used to form this gas giant planet,” Line added. “Over the next decade, JWST will make this measurement for a variety of planets, providing insights into the details of how planets form and the uniqueness of our solar system.”
A new era in exoplanet research
The highly sensitive Webb telescope was launched on Christmas Day 2021 to its current orbit 1.5 million kilometers (nearly 932,000 miles) from Earth. By observing the universe with longer wavelengths of light than other space telescopes, Webb can study the beginning of time more closely, hunt for unseen formations among the first galaxies, and peer into the clouds of dust where stars and planetary systems are currently forming. In the captured spectrum of the planet’s atmosphere, the researchers saw a small bump between 4.1 and 4.6 microns — a “clear signal of carbon dioxide,” said team leader Natalie Batalha, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. in Santa. Cruise, in traffic. (A micron is a unit of length equal to one millionth of a meter.) “Depending on the composition, thickness and turbidity of the atmosphere, it absorbs certain colors of light more than others — making the planet appear larger,” said team member Munazza Alam, a postdoctoral fellow in the Earth & Planets Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution. Science. “We can analyze these tiny differences in planet size to reveal the chemical composition of the atmosphere.” Access to this part of the light spectrum – which the Webb telescope makes possible – is crucial for measuring the abundance of gases such as methane and water, as well as carbon dioxide, believed to exist in many exoplanets, according to with NASA. Because individual gases absorb different combinations of colors, researchers can look at “tiny differences in the brightness of emitted light across a spectrum of wavelengths to determine exactly what an atmosphere is made of,” according to NASA. Previously, NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer telescopes discovered water vapor, sodium and potassium in the planet’s atmosphere. “Previous observations of this planet with Hubble and Spitzer had given us tantalizing clues that carbon dioxide could be present,” Batalha said. “The data from JWST showed an unmistakable carbon dioxide feature that was so prominent it was practically calling out to us.” “As soon as the data appeared on my screen, the amazing feature of carbon dioxide grabbed me,” team member Zafar Rustamkulov, a graduate student in the Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, said in a news release. release. “It was a special moment, crossing an important threshold in exoplanet science,” he added. Discovered in 2011, WASP-39b has about the same mass as Saturn and about a quarter of the mass of Jupiter, while its diameter is 1.3 times that of Jupiter. Since the exoplanet orbits very close to its star, it completes one circuit in just over four Earth days.
