“The ability to determine the amount of heavy elements in a planet is critical to understanding how it formed, and we’ll be able to use this carbon dioxide measuring stick for a whole bunch of exoplanets to build up a comprehensive understanding of giant planet composition,” he said.īatalha’s team observed WASP-39b as part of a JWST Early Release Science program to study transiting exoplanets. Stars and gas giant planets are made primarily of the lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, but the abundance of heavier elements-what astronomers call “metallicity”-is a critical factor in planet formation, Fortney explained. “Carbon dioxide is actually a very sensitive measuring stick-the best one we have-for heavy elements in giant planet atmospheres, so the fact that we can see it so clearly is really great,” said coauthor Jonathan Fortney, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC and director of the Other Worlds Laboratory. For exoplanet researchers, it is important both as a gas they are likely to be able to detect on small rocky planets and as an indicator of the overall abundance of heavy elements in the atmospheres of giant planets. “The data from JWST showed an unequivocal carbon dioxide feature that was so prominent it was practically shouting at us.”Ĭarbon dioxide is an important component of the atmospheres of planets in our solar system, found on rocky planets like Mars and Venus as well as gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. “Previous observations of this planet with Hubble and Spitzer had given us tantalizing hints that carbon dioxide could be present,” Batalha said. Natalie Batalha, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, leads the team of astronomers that made the detection, using JWST to observe a Saturn-mass planet called WASP-39b which orbits very close to a sun-like star about 700 light-years from Earth. The discovery, accepted for publication in Nature and posted online August 24, demonstrates the power of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to deliver unprecedented observations of exoplanet atmospheres. For the first time, astronomers have found unambiguous evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet (a planet outside our solar system).
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