2023-05-14 06:00:00
Written by Amira Shehata
Sunday, May 14, 2023 09:00 AM
And according to Phys, despite being the most common type of planet found throughout the Milky Way, little Neptune is strangely absent from our solar system. As a result, astronomers know very little about these worlds.
Gliese 1214 b proved difficult to observe due to its highly reflective atmosphere, until JWST turned its sights toward the alien world.
“The planet is completely shrouded in some kind of haze or cloud layer,” lead researcher and extrasolar astronomer at the University of Maryland Eliza Kimpton said in a statement.
Kempton added that GJ 1214 b has already proven to have a water-rich atmosphere, so the exoplanet may have been a “water world” in its distant past, an exoplanet filled with large amounts of watery and icy material at the time of its formation.
Astronomers don’t expect to find liquid water oceans on GJ 1214 b, but they think the planet’s atmosphere may still be made up of a large amount of water vapor.
This thick, steamy atmosphere helped the highly reflective exoplanet maintain its mystery, and the team used a new combination of methods to probe GJ 1214 b’s thick atmosphere as it orbits its star Gliese 1214, which it orbits in just 1.6 Earth days.
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#James #Webb #Space #Telescope #studying #mysterious #exoplanet #habitability