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Space
2022-10-03 09:47:10

Astronomers discover carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a distant planet for the first time

Астрономы впервые обнаружили углекислый газ в атмосфере далекой планеты

The James Webb telescope has detected traces of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the gas giant WASP-39b. This is the first such find outside the solar system and could tell us a lot about the formation of an exoplanet.

The James Webb Space Observatory operates primarily in the near- and mid-infrared wavelengths. This makes it a handy tool for observing not only the most distant and ancient galaxies, but also planets much closer. As a planet moves against the background of its parent star, some of its radiation passes through the atmosphere, absorbing photons of a certain wavelength.

The telescope can pick up these absorption spectra to ascertain the gaseous composition of the atmosphere. In doing so, James Webb's unique resolving power helps to view relatively small planets that were inaccessible to Hubble, Spitzer and other telescopes of previous generations. For the first such observations, James Webb focused on the exoplanet WASP-39b, whose atmosphere was once found to contain large amounts of water vapour.

WASP-39b orbits a solar-type star, a yellow dwarf located 700 light years from the Sun. It is a hot, gas giant Jupiter, closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun. It is 1.3 times the size of Jupiter itself but its density - and as a result its mass - is several times less than that of Jupiter.

James Webb has made new observations of WASP-39b, and their first results are presented in a paper accepted for publication in Nature. In the future, astronomers promise to make public the entire spectrum covering the optical and infrared ranges - the full "fingerprints" of the atmosphere. However, the first data have already revealed that, in addition to water, there are noticeable amounts of carbon dioxide present. This is the first such finding in the atmosphere of a distant exoplanet.

The discovery of CO2 isn't just interesting in itself. The gas provides a measure of a planet's metallicity, that is, its content of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, which dominate the composition of stars and gas giants alike. Nevertheless, 'metals' are thought to play a major role in the formation of such planets. It is these that form the nucleus around which large quantities of lighter and more volatile matter accumulate to form planets like Jupiter, Saturn or Uranus.

Quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of WASP-39b have shown: its metallicity is close to that seen on Saturn, and the planet's mass is also close to that of Saturn. Except for the ring system, the two worlds are remarkably similar and differ sharply only in their distance from the star. Most likely, they formed in the same way and under similar conditions, but then something drove the two planets into completely different orbits.



космос




Encyclopaedic reference
Космос - относительно пустые участки Вселенной, которые лежат вне границ атмосфер небесных тел.

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