Catch your breath! 🌬️
Webb has captured the first clear evidence of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere of a planet outside of our solar system. WASP-39 b is a gas giant closely orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light years away. For this planet, one year — or a complete orbit around its star — is only four Earth days.
We learn about an exoplanet’s atmosphere by breaking its light into components and creating a spectrum, or " barcode." All the elements and molecules present have signatures in that “barcode” that we can read. Though missions like Hubble and Spitzer previously detected water vapor, sodium, and potassium, it took Webb’s extraordinary infrared sensitivity to reveal the presence of CO2 in this planet’s atmosphere.
Understanding atmospheric composition can help us learn more about a planet’s origin and evolution. Webb’s success here offers evidence that it could also be able to detect and measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets. More at the link in our bio!
Image Descriptions:
1. Graphic that says: "Carbon Dioxide Detected in Exoplanet Atmosphere" and has a yellow arrow underneath it. The Webb Space Telescope logo is in the bottom right corner. The top right says "Artist Illustration" in small white text. The background of the graphic shows an artist illustration of a pinkish planet and its star on an empty black background.
2. The graphic shows the transmission spectrum of the hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-39 b, captured using Webb's NIRSpec Bright Object Time-Series Spectroscopy mode. An illustration of the planet and its star is in the background. The vertical y axis is labeled “amount of light blocked” and runs from 2.00 percent (less light blocked) to 2.35 percent (more light blocked). The x axis is labeled “wavelength of light” and ranges from 3.00 microns to 5.6 microns. The data points are plotted as white circles with gray error margin bars running through them. A curvy blue line represents a best-fit model. A prominent peak in the blue line is labeled “Carbon Dioxide, CO2." This peak is centered around 4.3 microns and has a y value of between 2.25 and 2.30 percent of light blocked.