The James Webb space telescope team was able – for the first time – to make a detailed file of a planet located 700 light years from Earth, providing a complete list of atoms and molecules in its atmosphere, along with signs of active chemical reactions and the cloud system.
This planet is called “WASP-39 b” (WASP-39 b) and it joins a class of planets called “Hot Saturn” and it is close enough to the star it orbits so that its surface temperature reaches 900 degrees Celsius, which is almost twice as high. The temperature of planets in the solar system (Venus).
According to previous studies on this planet, its mass is about 0.28 times the mass of Jupiter, its radius is about one and a third of Jupiter’s, and it orbits its star once every 4 days only.
New data on the planet
But James Webb went deeper into studying the composition of “Wasp 39 b” compared to previous observations, as his recent results indicated, for example, that this planet contains an intermittent cover of clouds.
In addition, James Webb’s data, which were published in 5 research papers, indicated the presence of sulfur dioxide “SO 2” (SO2) in the planet’s atmosphere, a molecule that results from chemical reactions resulting from high-energy light from the parent star.
This is understandable, of course, in the context that this planet is very close to the star, only at a distance of 7 million kilometers from it, meaning that if it were in our solar system, it would be about 8 times closer to the sun than Mercury.
Other components of the atmosphere, revealed by James Webb, include proportions of the elements sodium, potassium and water vapour.
James Webb was also able to monitor the presence of carbon dioxide with greater accuracy than previous telescopes, and for the first time the presence of carbon monoxide “CO” (CO) was detected in the atmosphere of this planet.
According to new studies, this diverse chemical reserve in the atmosphere of “Wasp 39b” indicates an ancient history of crashes and mergers that formed this planet over a long period of time, and it is the same way the planets of the solar system were formed, as groups of rocky masses united. Mega to create the ultimate big planet.
Planetary Photographer
In general, scientists are able to study the atmospheres of those planets using the “transit” method, which means that during the transit of a planet in front of its star, the light passes from the star through the planet’s atmosphere and then to the lenses and mirrors of the telescope.
When this light passes – through the planet’s atmosphere – the components of this atmosphere leave what looks like a chemical fingerprint on the light beam, and scientists can read it with a great degree of accuracy.
In the case of James Webb – specifically – more accuracy in these measurements results from making them in the infrared range, where molecules in the atmospheres of exoplanets have the largest number of spectral fingerprints within this electromagnetic range.