2023-05-11 22:16:46
NASA reported that one of its scientific teams working on observation through the James Webb telescope managed to capture closer images of a planet that he defines as “mysterious” and which is outside the solar system.
“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has observed a distant planet outside our solar system, and unlike anything in it, to reveal what is likely to be a highly reflective world with a steamy atmosphere. It is the closest look yet at the mysterious world, a “mini-Neptune” that was largely impenetrable to previous observations,” the organization explained regarding the importance of the recent achievement.
The planet, called GJ 1214 b, It is too hot to support oceans of liquid water, NASA said. who also warned that its temperatures are too hot to be supported by a human being.
“The planet is totally covered by some kind of haze or cloud cover,” said Eliza Kempton.a researcher at the University of Maryland and lead author of a new paper, published in Nature, on the planet.
He pointed out that if indeed it was rich in water, the planet might have been a “water world”, with large amounts of watery and icy material at the time of its formation.
NASA said that to penetrate such a thick barrier, the research team took a chance on a novel approach: In addition to performing the standard observation (capturing light from the host star that filtered through the planet’s atmosphere), they tracked to GJ 1214 ba throughout almost its entire orbit around the star.
“The observation demonstrates the power of the Webb Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), that sees wavelengths of light outside the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that human eyes can see,” NASA explained.
Using MIRI, the research team was able to create a kind of “heat map” of the planet as it orbited the star.
The heat map revealed, just before the planet’s orbit took it behind the star and as both the day and night sides emerged on the other side, details of the composition of the atmosphere.
Despite the heat on the planet, NASA specified that it is much colder than expected. This is because its unusually bright atmosphere, which surprised the researchers, reflects a large fraction of the light from its parent star instead of absorbing it and heating it up.
The new observations might open the door to a deeper understanding of a type of planet shrouded in uncertainty.
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