The researchers believe their discovery will just be the first of many in Webb’s future. Given that the star is less than half the temperature of our sun, it’s possible that the planet could still maintain an atmosphere despite its close proximity to the star. The planet completes a single orbit around its red dwarf host star every 2 Earth days. “We have barely begun scratching the surface of what their atmospheres might be like.” “We’re at the forefront of studying small, rocky exoplanets,” Lustig-Yaeger said. This graphic shows the change in relative brightness of the host star and planet, spanning three hours. If the researchers detect any clouds on LHS 475 b, it may turn out to be more like Venus - which is considered to be Earth’s hotter twin with a carbon dioxide atmosphere. Webb’s detections also revealed that the planet is a few hundred degrees warmer than our planet. The astronomers will have another chance to observe the planet again over the summer and conduct follow-up analysis on the potential presence of an atmosphere. “It can’t have a thick methane-dominated atmosphere, similar to that of Saturn’s moon Titan.” “There are some terrestrial-type atmospheres that we can rule out,” Lustig-Yaeger said. For now, the team hasn’t been able to make any definitive conclusions, but the telescope’s sensitivity picked up on a range of molecules that were present. The research team used Webb to analyze the planet across multiple wavelengths of light to see whether it has an atmosphere. Webb is the only telescope that has the capability to characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets that are the size of Earth. “The fact that it is also a small, rocky planet is impressive for the observatory,” Stevenson said. The existence of the planet has been confirmed by the Webb telescope. This illustration shows the exoplanet LHS 475 b, rocky and almost the exact same size as Earth. The planet’s discovery was announced Wednesday at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. Webb’s pristine data validate it,” Lustig-Yaeger said in a statement. “There is no question that the planet is there. They watched for dips in starlight as the planet passed in front of its host star, called a transit, and watched two transits occur. Previous data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, had suggested the planet might exist.Ī team of researchers, led by staff astronomer Kevin Stevenson and postdoctoral fellow Jacob Lustig-Yaeger at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, observed the target using Webb. The rocky world is 41 light-years away in the Octans constellation. The celestial body, known as LHS 475 b and located outside of our solar system, is almost exactly the same size as Earth. The James Webb Space Telescope can add another cosmic accomplishment to its list: The space observatory has been used to confirm the existence of an exoplanet for the first time.
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