Scientists used transmission of light to determine the makeup of the gas giant's atmosphere.
. The planet’s puffiness is partially due to the fact that it’s about 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit , giving it the nickname “hot Saturn.” WASP-39b is in an endless summer because it orbits its home star very closely, unlike the cooler and more compact gas giants in our solar system. It’s so close that it completes a complete orbit of its star, or one “year,” in just over four Earth-days.WASP-39b was first reported using ground-based detections of periodic dimming of light from its host star.
Different gases absorb different combinations of colors, which means researchers “can analyze small differences in brightness of the transmitted light across a spectrum of wavelengths to determine exactly what an atmosphere is made of” according to NASA.
Credits: Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, and L. Hustak ; Science: The JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Teamfor these observations. “As soon as the data appeared on my screen, the whopping carbon dioxide feature grabbed me,” Zafar Rustamkulov, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and member of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science team, which undertook this investigation, said in a statement.
“Detecting such a clear signal of carbon dioxide on WASP-39 b bodes well for the detection of atmospheres on smaller, terrestrial-sized planets,” team leader Natalie Batalha of the University of California at Santa Cruz said in the NASA statement. For scientists, understanding what makes up a planet’s atmosphere is important because it offers a window into its origin and evolution. “Carbon dioxide molecules are sensitive tracers of the story of planet formation,” research team member Mike Line of Arizona State University said in the NASA statement. “By measuring this carbon dioxide feature, we can determine how much solid versus how much gaseous material was used to form this gas giant planet.
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