The Webb Space Telescope recently trained its perceptive gaze on a rocky exoplanet about 26 light-years from Earth and found that It appears to have water vapor in its atmosphere — a shock, given its extreme intensity temperature and proximity to its host star.
world — named GJ 486 b has a mass of about 2.8 times that of Earth but only 30% It is larger, which means it has a stronger gravitational pull than our planet. DrCovered in 2021And GJ 486 b has a surface temperature of about 800 degrees F It wraps around its host star, a red dwarf, each 1.5 Earth days. Red dwarfs are some of the faintest stars around. some of them It will be the last shining thing in the universe.
Stars tend to throw away a lot Ultraviolet and X-rays, which can make it difficult for closely orbiting worlds to maintain their atmospheres. (We should not take our novelty for granted atmosphere for granted; The early Earth’s atmosphere was much closer to that of Venuswhile Mars has lost most of its hydrogen-rich atmosphere.)
While GJ 486 b is too close to its star to be in habitable areaAnd Goldilocks region where liquid water can persist on the surface of an object, data from proposed Webb’s near infrared spectrometer (NIRSpec) Water vapor is present on a planet outside the solar system. In other words, despite its sweltering surface, a rocky exoplanet might have an atmosphere, which would come as a shock.
“Water vapor in the atmosphere on a hot, rocky planet would represent a major breakthrough for exoplanetary science. Kevin Stephenson, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University and principal investigator on the project, said in a statement. Issued by the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Stevenson research sROJECT Focuses on the number and types of atmospheres of exoplanets orbiting red dwarfs Named after the Jordin Sparks song (I guess you can guess which is which.) The last team a job It is slated for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
It may seem counterintuitive that water would be associated with a massive starA wandering ball of gas ffrom nuclear fusion. But red dwarfs can get so cold that water vapor They can concentrate in their own photosphere. These “star locations” can be a red herring for those fishing the waters of the cosmos.
“We haven’t noticed any evidence of the planet crossing any stars during the transits. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t points anywhere else on the star. And that’s exactly the physical scenario that would imprint this water signal in the data and it could end up looking like planetary atmosphere”. Ryan McDonald, a University of Michigan astrophysicist and co-author of the paper, in STScI launch.
More notes can Explain where this is Water signal coming from. Plans to use Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) to look at GJ 486 b’s day side may reveal whether there is a rotating atmosphere of heat from the day side of the gradually locked world to its night side.
If Webb locates the source of the water signal, it will be another Feather in the cap of the space observatory. Webb has found worlds with Muddy atmosphereAnd harmful atmosphereAnd Of course worlds completely lacking atmosphere. in other worksds, it is entirely possible that Webb was the first telescope To discover a rocky world submerged in water vapor.
More: The Webb telescope reveals a nearby exoplanet has no atmosphere