Thread by @BiIndia

#NASA's James Webb Space Telescope detects carbon dioxide in a distant world's atmosphere for the first time

#JamesWebbSpaceTelescope

businessinsider.in/science/news/n…

NASA's #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope have detected evidence of carbon dioxide in a world beyond our solar system.

The planet, called WASP-39 b, is a gas giant orbiting a sun-like star about 700 light-years away, where temperatures are consistently about 900 degrees Celsius.

#NASA

While the planet was first discovered in 2011, Webb's sensitive infrared instruments allowed researchers to analyze it in detail, definitely detecting carbon dioxide there for the first time.

#JamesWebbSpaceTelescope #NASA

To better understand planets around other stars, researchers train their telescopes to measure the chemical makeup of the exoplanet's atmospheres.

Using Webb's NIRSpec instrument, astronomers looked at the gases and chemicals present in WASP-39 b.

businessinsider.in/science/news/n…

"As soon as the data appeared on my screen, the whopping carbon dioxide feature grabbed me," said Zafar Rustamkulov, member of the transiting exoplanet team, in a press release. "It's a special moment, an important threshold in exoplanet sciences."

esawebb.org/news/weic2213/…

While carbon dioxide is associated with life on Earth, astronomers typically look for the ingredients that sustain life — liquid water, a continuous source of energy, carbon, and other elements — when hunting for life in distant worlds.

#NASA #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope

When NASA revealed the first batch of Webb images on July 12, the agency included data showing the existence of water, along with evidence of clouds and haze, in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called WASP-96 b.

#JamesWebbSpaceTelescope
businessinsider.in/science/news/n…

"With the #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope, we can explore the chemical makeup of the atmosphere of other worlds — and if there are signs in it that we can only explain by life," Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy at Cornell University, previously told @thisisinsider.