The James Webb Space Telescope shows that a gas giant planet is partly cloudy - NPR

This illustration shows however the state elephantine satellite WASP-39 b mightiness look arsenic it orbits its big star. NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) hide caption

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NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

This illustration shows however the state elephantine satellite WASP-39 b mightiness look arsenic it orbits its big star.

NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

The James Webb Space Telescope has identified a affluent premix of gases swirling successful the skies of a hot, Jupiter-like satellite orbiting a prima that's astir 700-light years from Earth.

In summation to c dioxide, water, and different molecules, described successful a bid of caller technological papers published online, researchers accidental the scope has spotted signs of sulfur dioxide.

That indispensable person been produced by a concatenation of chemic reactions successful the planet's atmosphere, sparked by airy from the Sun-like prima that this state elephantine satellite intimately orbits, going astir astir erstwhile each 4 days.

"That's precise exciting," says Jacob Bean, an astronomer astatine the University of Chicago.

He notes that reactions started by airy are an important portion of planetary atmospheres. In the Earth's atmosphere, for example, sunlight produces ozone that blocks harmful radiation from reaching the planet's surface. But this benignant of chemistry had ne'er been unambiguously observed successful the ambiance of a satellite extracurricular our star strategy before.

Understanding however it works connected different worlds "is going to beryllium important for knowing beingness connected different planets," says Bean.

Scientists person detected thousands of planets orbiting acold disconnected stars, astir ever indirectly, by staring astatine stars with telescopes to spot however they're affected by the beingness of orbiting planets. In astir cases, researchers cognize thing astir the planets different than the worlds' approximate size and region from the star.

Sometimes, however, they've been capable to get clues astir planets' atmospheres, by analyzing the starlight that filters through. That's due to the fact that antithetic molecules sorb antithetic wavelengths of light.

The Hubble Space Telescope, for example, discovered a surprising magnitude of h2o vapor successful the ambiance of this peculiar planet, called WASP-39 b.

So erstwhile NASA's caller flagship telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, launched successful December, scientists were anxious to adjacent astatine this satellite to comparison the presumption provided by their caller instruments to what had antecedently been seen with Hubble.

"The Hubble observations person been confirmed, but we've gone truthful overmuch deeper successful knowing of this satellite by revealing each these antithetic molecules and being capable to qualify their abundances overmuch much precisely, and past to spot things that we didn't truly expect," says Bean.

"For example, the sulfur dioxide, that's not thing we ever had a accidental of seeing with Hubble," says Bean. "But it was rather casual and it conscionable benignant of fell retired of these archetypal James Webb observations."

In summation to detecting a big of antithetic molecules successful the atmosphere, astronomers besides saw signs that this satellite has a patchy, scattered unreality cover, helium adds.

"It's not afloat clouded over," says Bean. "It's ever fantastic erstwhile we tin larn thing caller astir 1 of these kinds of planets that allows maine to create, astatine slightest successful my head, a amended intelligence picture of what the satellite looks like."