The result offers a sneak peek at the observatory’s transformative potential for studying worlds beyond the solar system
The James Webb Space Telescope — already famous for its mesmerizing images of the cosmos — has done it again. The telescope has captured the first unambiguous evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the Solar System.
The plot, or spectrum, reveals detailed information about the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-39b, called a ‘hot Jupiter’ by scientists because it is slightly wider in diameter than Jupiter but orbits its star much more closely than Mercury orbits the Sun, making it unbearably hot. The planet, which is over 200 parsecs from Earth, was initially discovered during ground-based observations and later detected by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, operational between 2003 and 2020.
Mysterious origins The result has bolstered confidence that Webb is going to be revolutionary for exoplanet research. In the first year of its operation alone, the telescope is commissioned to observe 76 exoplanets, but the final tally could fall in the hundreds. It will gaze through the atmospheres of gas giants and small, rocky worlds that could be like Earth. “My very first thought when I saw that signal was ‘wow, this is going to work,’” Batalha says.
Or the answer might be that WASP-39b formed from materials in the cold outer reaches of its planetary system, then migrated inward. At its final resting spot, it snuggled up to its host star, which could have blasted away some of the hydrogen in the exoplanet’s atmosphere — concentrating heavier elements to make it appear richer in carbon dioxide.
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