James Webb, NASA’s modern space telescope, gives us a clearer picture of planets far beyond our solar system and allows us to study their atmospheres in more detail.

This week, astronomers announced that they have found evidence of chemical reactions in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-39b, which is located 700 light-years from Earth. Researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope have created a detailed chemical picture of the gases revolving around it.

This “fluffy planet” or “hot Saturn” (a class of planets, gas giants whose density is below 0.5 g/cm³) orbits very close to its host star, meaning it has a high temperature of up to 900°C. Its mass is about a quarter of the mass of Jupiter (1.8986×1027 kg 318 Earth masses), but it is 1.3 times larger than it.

Preliminary information about WASP-39b was published this summer, when James Webb detected carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, the first such gas to be detected on a planet outside our solar system. Now, a more detailed picture of its atmosphere is examined in a series of articles published recently on arXiv. The researchers used Webb’s three instruments – NIRSpec, NIRCam and NIRISS – to gather spectroscopic information about the planet’s atmosphere.

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“We have observed the exoplanet with the help of several instruments, which together cover a wide spectrum of infrared radiation and a mass of chemical signatures unavailable to the James Webb launch,” commented one of the researchers, Natalie Bataglia from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Over the past decade, astronomers have discovered many planets outside our solar system. To date, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed, and now the task is to study them in more detail. This applies not only to the size or mass of exoplanets, but also to the study of their atmospheres. Webb’s instruments allow us to see these distant atmospheres in more detail than ever before.

James Webb instruments are used to perform the technique of transit spectroscopy. They observe the light from the main star as it passes through the exoplanet’s atmosphere. This light is broken into different wavelengths, and so researchers can see which wavelengths have been absorbed. Different chemicals absorb different wavelengths of light, allowing researchers to identify them.

The study showed that the atmosphere contained sodium, potassium, carbon monoxide, water vapor and carbon dioxide. The latter hints at a process similar to that seen in Earth’s ozone layer, as carbon dioxide is produced by chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere triggered by light from the host star.

“This is the first time we’ve seen concrete evidence of photochemistry—chemical reactions triggered by energetic starlight—on exoplanets. This mission opens up prospects for improving our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres,” said another researcher Shang Ming Cai from the University of Oxford.

Given that WASP-39b orbits quite close to its host star (at 1/8 the distance between Mercury and the Sun), studying it can reveal how radiation from stars interacts with planetary atmospheres. Although radiation can be harmful (Earth is shielded from solar radiation by its magnetosphere), it can also play an important role in chemical reactions, forming the molecules needed to maintain an atmosphere suitable for life.

“Planets form and transform as they rotate in the ‘radiation bath’ of their host star. On Earth, these transformations allow life to flourish,” Batalya summarizes.

Source: The Verge

• The James Webb Telescope was launched into space in December of last year, and in mid-January 2022 reached a working halo orbit around the second Lagrange point in the Sun-Earth system, and in July, after several months of instrument calibration and optical adjustment, it finally began to perform of his scientific program.
• James Webb’s first targets included exoplanet atmospheres, protoscopies, circumstellar disks, quasars, trans-Neptunian objects, and comets. In September 2022, the telescope received images of the first exoplanet – HIP 65426b, a giant planet believed to be several times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System.
• In total, Webb spent almost a year in space – here’s a selection of all his most amazing pictures so far.