NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has detected the first clear evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the Earth's solar system. Discovered in 2011, WASP-39 b is a gas giant planet, with a mass close to that of Saturn, 1.3 times larger in diameter than Jupiter, and orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away.
Astronomers attribute the planet's intense swelling to its high temperature, which reaches 900 degrees Celsius. Unlike the gas giant planets, WASP-39 b orbits close to its star - about one-eighth of the distance between the Sun and Mercury - and completes one circle in just over four days on Earth.
Previous telescopes such as Hubble and Spitzer revealed the presence of water vapor, sodium and potassium in the atmosphere of this planet, but "James Webb" was able, using infrared radiation, to monitor the presence of carbon dioxide.
A member of the early reporting team of the Exoplanet Complex, Zafar Rostamkulov, said that as soon as the data arrived that revealed carbon dioxide on the planet, he felt an unprecedented scientific achievement in the field of planets far from Earth, ABC News reported.
How did scientists discover the presence of carbon dioxide?
1. The research team used a method called spectroscopy.
2. The idea of spectroscopy is based on the principle that different materials emit and interact with different wavelengths or colors of light in different ways, depending on properties such as temperature and composition.
3. Researchers can use spectra - detailed patterns of colors - to learn things like exactly how hot something is and what elements and compounds it is made of, without sampling them directly.
4. The research team used James Webb's NIRSpec near-infrared spectrometer to study WASP-39 b.
5. Because different gases absorb different combinations of colors, researchers can analyze small differences in the brightness of light transmitted across a spectrum of wavelengths to determine exactly what the atmosphere is made of.
6. In the spectrum produced by the planet's atmosphere, a wave between 4.1 and 4.6 micrometers (one thousandth of a millimeter) provided the first clear and detailed evidence of carbon dioxide ever detected in a planet outside our solar system.
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