The first unambiguous detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet was announced today. This is the first evidence of carbon dioxide on a planet outside our solar system.
The hot gas giant WASP-39b is 700 light-years away and has a mass similar to that of Saturn.
The WASP consortium used ground-based telescopes to discover the planet in 2011.
There was a lot of water in the exoplanet's atmosphere, as well as some salts and minerals. The presence of carbon dioxide on this planet has been confirmed by JWST.
The lack of a telescope that could produce a spectrum across the right wavelength range was the reason why we hadn't been able to identify CO 2 in the atmosphere of WASP 39 b.
The discovery shows that the promise of being a transformational facility for astronomy is being fulfilled.
Natalie Batalha of the University of California at Santa Cruz is the leader of the team.
She said that over 300 scientists from around the world are taking part.
The paper has been accepted for publication in Nature and should appear online next week.
Carbon dioxide is present in Earth's atmosphere as part of the carbon cycle, but is also being released by human activities. It is important for scientists to find CO 2 in the atmosphere of another world.
One area of research that was highly anticipated was studying exoplanet atmospheres. The team used the telescope's NIR Spec for its observations.
The presence of carbon dioxide was immediately apparent when Kempton received an early version of the spectrum.
She said that the shape of the spectrum is unmistakable to her, who models exoplanet atmospheres for a living.
In previous exoplanet atmosphere observations, we would typically go through a process of comparing many different possible atmosphere models to the data to convince ourselves that we've detected a specific atom or molecule. The CO 2 waved 'Hello!' for the observation of WASP 39 b. I'm here.
There's a small hill between 4.1 and 4.6 microns in the exoplanet's atmosphere. Kempton said that no other observatory has ever measured such subtle differences in brightness of so many individual colors across the 3 to 5.5-micron range.
The press statement said that access to this part of the spectrum is crucial for measuring abundances of gases like water and methane, as well as carbon dioxide, which are thought to exist in many different types of exoplanets.
WASP 39 was measured for eight hours and waited for it to be overtaken by the planet WASP 39b. Batalha explained that this is the same transit technique used by NASA to find exoplanets.
The transits are observed in "white light" whereas the transits can be seen in hundreds of colors. She said that the JWST can do this because it has the ability to spread white light into rainbow-like colors.
The detection of carbon dioxide on WASP 39 b boded well for the detection of atmospheres on smaller planets.
The starlight is partially obscured by the planet during a transit. Light is sent through the atmosphere.
Researchers can determine exactly what an atmosphere is made of by analyzing small differences in the brightness of the transmitted light across a spectrum of wavelength.
It took WASP 39 b just over four Earth-days to complete it's closest approach to its star. The team knew that WASP 39 b was an ideal target because of its atmosphere and frequent transits.
Sarah Kendrew is a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and she said it was amazing to see the data produced so early in the mission.
Understanding the composition of a planet's atmosphere is important because it tells us a lot about the origin and evolution of the planet.
"Seeing the data for the first time was like reading a poem in its entirety, when before we only had a few words," said Laura.
The Early Release Science data shows that smaller and cooler exoplanets are within its reach, and these first results are just the start.
The team hopes that this early release will encourage other teams to work together and share the data that is being produced.
The goal is to analyze the Early Release Science observations quickly and develop open- source tools for the science community.
The best science will come out of the coming decades of observations, thanks to this.
This article was published in the past. The original article is worth a read.
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