A University of Central Florida researcher is part of an international team that has used NASA 麻豆精品 S檚 James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to capture definitive evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a gas-giant planet orbiting a sun-like star 700 light-years away.
The finding was published online today and will appear in the journal Nature.
The discovery provides insights into the composition and formation of the planet and demonstrates JWST 麻豆精品 S檚 ability to detect and measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets.
It is the first detailed, indisputable evidence for carbon dioxide ever detected on a planet outside the solar system. The planet is called WASP-39 b and is in the constellation Virgo. The team used JWST 麻豆精品 S檚 Near Infrared Spectrograph, or NIRSpec, and also detected another molecule that has yet to be identified.
麻豆精品 S淚t 麻豆精品 S檚 a very, very clear detection, 麻豆精品 S� says study co-author Joseph Harrington, a UCF Pegasus Professor of Physics. 麻豆精品 S淚t 麻豆精品 S檚 a whack-you-on-the-head level of detection. 麻豆精品 S�
麻豆精品 S淎ll prior observatories, Hubble, Spitzer, ground based, you name it, were struggling to be able to detect carbon dioxide, 麻豆精品 S� Harrington says. 麻豆精品 S淏efore, we had a very noisy signal, and you really couldn’t see anything. Now we have a very clear detection. It’s a really a demonstration of what the telescope can do. 麻豆精品 S�
No observatory has ever measured such subtle differences in brightness of so many individual colors across the 3 to 5.5-micron range in an exoplanet transmission spectrum before. Access to this part of the spectrum is crucial for measuring abundances of gases like water and methane, as well as carbon dioxide, which are thought to exist in many different types of exoplanets.
Understanding the composition of a planet 麻豆精品 S檚 atmosphere is important because it tells researchers something about the origin of the planet and how it evolved.
麻豆精品 S淒etecting what the atmosphere is made of tells you a lot about the chemistry of that planet, 麻豆精品 S� Harrington says. 麻豆精品 S淲hen you’re learning about the balance of the chemicals in the atmosphere, it has implications for life. The amounts of carbon versus oxygen are pretty key items, because we’re made of carbon and oxygen. The goal of all of exoplanet science really is to characterize Earth-like planets and potentially find life. 麻豆精品 S�
Harrington 麻豆精品 S檚 role in the study included developing the proposal and editing the manuscript. He and his students have developed open-source analysis tools that will be used later in the project. The team of co-authors included more than 130 investigators from 15 countries.
One of the co-authors, Kevin Stevenson, a staff astronomer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, is co-principal investigator of the project and has been involved with it since its inception.
Stevenson received his Ph.D. in physics and planetary sciences from UCF in 2012 and was advised by Harrington.
He said his work at UCF using the Spitzer Space Telescope to study the atmospheres of several hot-Jupiter exoplanets at mid-infrared wavelengths, the same wavelengths covered by the JWST, gave him a deeper appreciation for the quality and precision of its data.
麻豆精品 S淛WST is already revolutionizing transiting exoplanet science, 麻豆精品 S� Stevenson says.
He says the team is preparing four more papers that they hope to publish soon.
麻豆精品 S淲e 麻豆精品 S檒l be looking to identify the mysterious molecule near 4 microns, searching for sodium and potassium at short wavelengths, and constraining the presence of other molecules, such as water vapor, methane and carbon monoxide, 麻豆精品 S� he says.聽 麻豆精品 S淓ach of these four papers will present data from the same planet, WASP-39 b, but using different instrument modes.聽This enables us to study the atmosphere of the same planet over a range of wavelengths and spectral resolutions. 麻豆精品 S�
The NIRSpec prism observation of WASP-39 b is just one part of a larger investigation that is observing this planet and two others using multiple instruments. The investigation, which is part of the Early Release Science program, was designed to provide the exoplanet research community with robust JWST data as soon as possible.
麻豆精品 S淭he goal is to analyze the Early Release Science observations quickly and develop open-source tools for the science community to use, 麻豆精品 S� says Vivien Parmentier from Oxford University. 麻豆精品 S淭his enables contributions from all over the world and ensures that the best possible science will come out of the coming decades of observations. 麻豆精品 S�
JWST is the world’s premier space science observatory. It will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and people 麻豆精品 S檚 place in it. JWST is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
Harrington received his doctoral degree in planetary science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 Department of Physics, part of the , in 2006. He began observing and modeling giant planets as an undergraduate at MIT. His pre-impact model of the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994, part of his MIT Ph.D. thesis in planetary sciences, was published on the cover of Nature and sparked the worldwide media spree surrounding that event. Harrington then held a National Research Council Fellowship at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, during which he modeled the aftermath of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact and also identified the majority of planetary waves known on planets other than Earth. From 1997-2006, he worked as a staff scientist at Cornell University, where his interests shifted to observing extrasolar planets. He was part of the team that first measured light from an extrasolar planet, a result published in Nature in April 2005. He continues his exoplanet work at UCF. In 2020, he was named a UCF Pegasus Professor. He served as chair of the UCF Faculty Senate and on the UCF Board of Trustees in 2020-2022.
Study title: Identification of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere
