Webb Space Telescope Showcases Its Incredible Power the Webb’s Gigantic Mirror and Precision Instrumentation Join Forces To Capture the Most Detailed Spectrum of an Exoplanet Atmosphere Ever

Webb Space Telescope Showcases Its Incredible Power: Detects Water on Distant Planet

A transmission spectrum made from a single observation using Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) reveals atmospheric characteristics of the hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-96 b. A transmission spectrum is made by comparing starlight filtered through a planet’s atmosphere as it moves across the star, to the unfiltered starlight detected when the planet is beside the star. Each of the 141 data points (white circles) on this graph represents the amount of a specific wavelength of light that is blocked by the planet and absorbed by its atmosphere. In a remarkable dream come true for exoplaneteers, NASA’s JamesWebb Space Telescope Showcases Space Telescope has demonstrated its unprecedented capacity to analyze the atmosphere of an exoplanet more than 1,000 light-years away. With the combined forces of its 270-square-foot (25-square-meter) mirror, precision spectrographs, and sensitive detectors, Webb has – in a single observation – detected the unambiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence for clouds that were thought not to exist based on prior observations. The transmission spectrum of the hot gas giant WASP-96 b, made using Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), offers just a glimpse into Webb’s exciting future of exoplanet exploration.

A light curve from Webb Space Telescope Showcases Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) shows the change in brightness of light from the WASP-96 star system over time as the planet transits the star. A transit occurs when an orbiting planet moves between the star and the telescope, blocking some of the light from the star. This observation was made using NIRISS’s Single-Object Slitless Spectroscopy (SOSS) mode, which involves capturing the spectrum of a single bright object, like the star WASP-96, in a field of view. To capture these data, Webb Space Telescope Showcases stared at the WASP-96 star system for 6 hours 23 minutes, beginning about 2½ hours before the transit and ending about 1½ hours after the transit was complete. The transit itself lasted for just under 2½ hours. The curve includes a total of 280 individual brightness measurements – one every 1.4 minutes.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the distinct signature of water in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star. It also found evidence of clouds and haze. The observation is the most detailed of its kind to date, demonstrating Webb’s incredible capability to analyze atmospheres hundreds of light-years away. It reveals the presence of specific gas molecules based on tiny decreases in the brightness of precise colors of light. Over the past two decades, the Hubble Space Telescope has analyzed numerous exoplanet atmospheres , capturing the first clear detection of water in 2013. However, Webb’s immediate and more detailed observation marks an enormous leap forward in the quest to characterize potentially habitable planets beyond Earth.

WASP-96 b is one of more than 5,000 confirmed exoplanets in the Milky Way. Located roughly 1,150 light-years away in the southern-sky constellation Phoenix, it represents a type of gas giant that has no direct analog in our solar system. With a mass less than half that of Jupiter and a diameter 1.2 times greater, WASP-96 b is much puffier than any planet orbiting our Sun. And with a temperature greater than 1000°F, it is significantly hotter. WASP-96 b orbits extremely close to its Sun-like star, just one-ninth of the distance between Mercury and the Sun, completing one circuit every 3½ Earth-days. The combination of large size, short orbital period, puffy atmosphere, and lack of contaminating light from objects nearby in the sky makes WASP-96 b an ideal target for atmospheric observations. On June 21, Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) measured light from the WASP-96 system for 6.4 hours as the planet moved across the star. The result is a light curve showing the overall dimming of starlight during the transit, and a transmission spectrum revealing the brightness change of individual wavelengths of infrared light between 0.6 and 2.8 microns. While the light curve confirms properties of the planet that had already been determined from other observations – the existence, size, and orbit of the planet – the transmission spectrum reveals previously hidden details of the atmosphere: the unambiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence of clouds that were thought not to exist based on prior observations

Source: This news is originally published by scitechdaily

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