JWST Dives Deep into the Ultra-Hot Exoplanet WASP-121b
Wasp-121bAlso known as Tylos, is a giant, ultra-hot planet, located 858 light years from Earth. It’s hot because he’s so close to his sister star. In fact, it takes a little more than a day, or 30 hours, so that the giant orbit its star.
The wasp is an exoplanet, or an extrasolar planet, which means that it is outside our solar system. And although we have known it since 2016, the James Webb space telescope (JWST) – which launched four years ago – helped us get a number of new ideas on this gas giant.
How hot was WASP-121B?
“It is so hot that all elements, including things like iron and silicates, which are essentially rocks, will be vaporized and in the sparkling phase,” said Thomas Evans-SomaAstronomer from Newcastle University in Australia. He recently led a study published in Natural astronomy Document the observation.
The wasp is what is called a “hot Jupiter” or an extremely hot category of exoplanets. These are gas planets that are also enormous and often more brilliant and easier to detect than some of the other exoplanets. The wasp is also about 1.8 times the radius of Jupiter.
It orbit very close to a star warmer than the sun. This is true for all hot jupiters, who orbit their stars much closer than mercury, the planet closest to the sun. And like Wasp, most hot jupiters quickly orbit their host star because of their location.
“If he was closer to the star, the gravitational tide forces would be so great that she would be physically torn apart,” explains Evans-Soma.
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A more in -depth look with JWST
While astronomers have observed the planet a little with the Hubble space telescope, the much more powerful new JWST gave scientists a more in -depth examination of its makeup.
“We were able to observe it at wavelengths longer than before,” explains Evans-Soma.
This means that they could observe that Wasp finishing a complete orbit around its host star, as well as to note the thermal emissions of the planet. In all, astronomers observed the planet for about 40 hours. The JWST is “ultra stable”, which means that it allows researchers to see that variations come from the planet and are not only the product of a trembling telescope.
And perhaps more importantly, JWST has allowed researchers to detect new molecules in the planet that have never been detected before, such as methane, carbon monoxide and silicon monoxide.
Methane, in particular, was surprising because it had been commonly found on cooler planets like Uranus and Neptune. He also turned out to be a planet rich in carbon.
What that tells us about the training of the wasp
The composition of the gases suggests that the wasp had to form far, then traveled a long distance to be close to the star it orbit now.
The wasp met following small gas pebbles, then, in the heat, vaporized and finally formed the planet. Because it has an environment rich in carbon, it has probably formed in an area where pebbles rich in methane vaporized and released ample of carbon in the atmosphere. The researchers were able to deduce where the planet formed according to its composition, explains Evans-Soma.
In the end, this study helps us to paint a painting of Jupiter’s hot formations in a way that we have not been able to previously.
“It helps us explain these hot [Jupiter] The planets, which were a mystery because we did not expect to find them so close to their host stars, ”explains Evans-Soma.
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Sara Novak is a scientific journalist based in South Carolina. In addition to writing to discover, his work appears in Scientific American, Popular Science, New Scientist, Sierra Magazine, Astronomy Magazine and many others. She obtained a Baccalaureate in journalism from the Grady School of Journalism from the University of Georgia. She is also a candidate for a master’s degree in scientific writing from Johns Hopkins University (expected diploma 2023).
