NASA’s James Webb Telescope discovered Bocaparins, a 700-light-year-away exoplanet 700 light-years from Earth.
This new planet is much larger than Earth and almost the size of Saturn. The uniqueness is that it is very close to its central star like Mercury is to the Sun, only it is 8 times closer. The heat that the star generates is around 871 degrees Celsius at the surface or the atmosphere.
Scientists have begun to call it the “Hot Saturn” as a result, and the heat causes the gases that emanate into its skies to be in their molecular form or standalone.
In other words, numerous gases can be seen floating around its atmosphere. This has created a fantastic detailed molecular portrait, where scientists have the advantage of looking at them individually, including photochemistry caused by the proximity of the host star.
Atmospheric Overview
Among the unprecedented revelations is the first detection in an exoplanet atmosphere of sulfur dioxide (SO2), a molecule produced from chemical reactions triggered by high-energy light from the planet’s parent star. On Earth, the protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere is created
Other atmospheric constituents detected by the Webb telescope include sodium (Na), potassium (K), and water vapor (H2O), confirming previous space- and ground-based telescope observations as well as finding additional fingerprints of water, at these longer wavelengths, that haven’t been seen before.
Webb also saw carbon dioxide (CO2) at higher resolution, providing twice as much data as reported from its previous observations. Meanwhile, carbon monoxide (CO) was detected, but obvious signatures of both methane (CH4) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) were absent from the Webb data. If present, these molecules occur at very low levels.
Scientists claim that with this data, they could rewrite each planet’s chemistry. Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz called it a “game changer”.
“Planets are sculpted and transformed by orbiting within the radiation bath of the host star,” Batalha said. “On Earth, those transformations allow life to thrive.”
Scientists say this is the first time they have seen what happens in photochemistry. The Earth’s ozone layer is created similarly. The heat and sunlight together have made our ozone layer. Scientists feel that this is the beginning of understanding exoplanet atmospheres better.
To see light from WASP-39b, the telescope tracked the planet as it passed in front of its star, allowing some of the star’s light to filter through the planet’s atmosphere.
Different types of chemicals in the atmosphere absorb different colors of the starlight spectrum, so astronomers are able to determine which molecules are present just by identifying which colors are missing from the spectrum.
Webb is able to pick up chemical fingerprints that cannot be detected in visible lift as it views the universe in infrared light.
“We had predicted what the telescope would show us, but it was more precise, more diverse, and more beautiful than I actually believed it would be,” said Hannah Wakeford, an astrophysicist at the UK’s University of Bristol, who investigates exoplanet atmospheres.
Having such a complete roster of chemical ingredients in an exoplanet atmosphere also gives scientists a glimpse of the abundance of different elements in relation to each other, such as carbon-to-oxygen or potassium-to-oxygen ratios. That, in turn, provides insight into how this planet – and perhaps others – formed out of the disk of gas and dust surrounding the parent star in its younger years.
The telescope has been a total success, and scientists are amazed by what they will get to study in the coming future. Detailed studies of exoplanets and their atmospheres are now made possible.
The telescope is used to explore minute details of the universe through photography. Even the distant light of the big bang is expected to be revealed by this telescope, according to what scientists believe. So the universe is being explored in a different way than earlier, which was mainly from a ground-based telescope.
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