![]() ![]() HIP 65426 b and VHS 1256 b are unlike anything we see in our solar system. “This is probably a violent and turbulent atmosphere that is filled with clouds,” Hinkley says. The telescope also saw signs of sand clouds, a common feature in brown dwarf atmospheres ( SN: 7/8/22). ![]() That means the atmosphere is getting mixed up, with winds or currents pulling molecules from lower depths to its top and vice versa. JWST found evidence that the amounts of carbon monoxide and methane in the atmosphere of the orb are out of equilibrium. It’s as heavy as 20 Jupiters, so it may be more like a transition object between a planet and a star, called a brown dwarf, than a giant planet. The spectrum allows a deeper look into the object’s chemistry and atmosphere, astronomer Brittany Miles of UC Santa Cruz and colleagues reported September 1 at. While the team has not yet studied the atmosphere of HIP 65426 b in detail, it did report the first spectrum - a measurement of light in a range of wavelengths - of an object orbiting a different star. “It’s amazing to see the Webb performing so well.” “Direct imaging is our future,” Seager says. Pictures in these wavelengths will help reveal how planets formed and what their atmospheres are made of. “I’ve literally been waiting for this day for six years. “These are wavelengths of light that we’ve never ever seen exoplanets in before,” Hinkley says. The space telescope observed the planet on July 17 and July 30, capturing its glow in four different infrared wavelengths. Earth’s atmosphere absorbs a lot of the planet’s infrared wavelengths - exactly the wavelengths JWST excels at observing. But because that telescope is on the ground, it can’t see all the light coming from the exoplanet. In 2017, astronomers discovered HIP 65426 b and took a direct image of it using an instrument on the Very Large Telescope in Chile. “This is the one area where nature didn’t really come through.” “In every area of exoplanet discovery, nature has been very generous,” says MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager, who was not involved in the JWST discovery. To see a planet directly, astronomers have to block out the light from its star and let the planet’s own light shine, a tricky process. But almost all of those planets were detected indirectly, either by the planets tugging on the stars with their gravity or blocking starlight as they cross between the star and a telescope’s view. “We’ve demonstrated really how powerful JWST is as an instrument for the direct imaging of exoplanets,” says exoplanet astronomer and coauthor Aarynn Carter of the University of California, Santa Cruz.Īstronomers have found more than 5,000 planets orbiting other stars ( SN: 3/22/22). And the telescope has once again surpassed astronomers’ expectations ( SN: 7/11/22). Those three features - size, distance and youth - made HIP 65426 b relatively easy to see, and so a good planet to test JWST’s observing abilities. ![]()
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