Scientists make unprecedented detection on a planet 700 light-years away

We don't need to take pretty pictures to change our view of the universe.

The space observatory, which reached its outpost one million miles from Earth this year, was focused on a planet called WASP 39 b. It's close to a star 700 light years away. Scientists used specialized instruments to detect the gasses on this extreme world.

For the first time, they've found a full menu of atoms and Molecules in an exoplanet's clouds. Astronomers can peer into the atmospheres of strange exoplanets and decipher what's transpiring or being made, and if these worlds contain conditions that could potentially harbor life. It is vital for life on our planet that atmospheric chemistry is created.

A star's light can cause chemical reactions on other planets. This is what is happening on WASP 39 b.

According to Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, planets are sculpted and transformed by the radiation bath of the host star. Those changes allow life to thrive. There are five research papers that show the discovery.

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Water vapor, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, sodium, and potassium were found by the telescope. Astronomers point the observatory at known exoplanets in the Milky Way. They do something very clever.

They'll wait for planets to travel in front of their bright stars. This starlight passes through the exoplanet's atmosphere, then through space, and ultimately into instruments called spectrographs aboard Webb (a strategy called "transit spectroscopy"). They're essentially hi-tech prisms, which separate the light into a rainbow of colors. Here's the big trick: Certain molecules, like water, in the atmosphere absorb specific types, or colors, of light. "Each molecule has a specific diet," explained Néstor Espinoza, an exoplanet researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs the James Webb Space Telescope.

So if that color doesn't show up in the spectrum of colors observed by a Webb spectrograph, that means it got absorbed by (or "consumed" by) the exoplanet's atmosphere. In other words, that element is present in that planet's skies. The spectrograph produces lines (designating different types of light), not pretty pictures; but it's a wealth of invaluable information.

When a star's light hits a planet's atmosphere, it makes sulphur dioxide. The researchers were able to determine that photochemistry formed this molecule in WASP 39 b's thick, fluffy clouds by using computers.

A graphic showing chemical reactions in WASP-39 b's atmosphere. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Robert Hurt; Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian / Melissa Weiss

Calculating atmospheres on other far-off worlds in space can now be done with the help of the telescope.

Laura Flagg, an exoplanet researcher at Cornell University, said that they would be able to see the big picture of exoplanet atmospheres. Everything is going to be changed. That is a great part of being a scientist.

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Stay on top of the situation. The atmospheres of seven rocky planets that are in the vicinity of a solar system that is not too hot or cold will be looked into by the telescope. Water could accumulate on some of these orbs.

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