Exoplanet atmospheres Archives

April 8, 2024April 8, 2024 by Evan Gough

Measuring the Atmospheres of Other Worlds to See if There are Enough Nutrients for Life

A NASA graphic explaining how a telescope can measure an exoplanet atmosphere using spectroscopy. Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lizbeth B. De La Torre.

Life on Earth depends on six critical elements: Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorous, and Sulfur. These elements are referred to as CHNOPS, and along with several trace micronutrients and liquid water, they’re what life needs.

Scientists are getting a handle on detecting exoplanets that might be warm enough to have liquid water on their surfaces, habitability’s most basic signal. But now, they’re looking to up their game by finding CHNOPS in exoplanet atmospheres.

April 6, 2024April 6, 2024 by Brian Koberlein

The First Atmospheric Rainbow on an Exoplanet?

Artist impression of glory on exoplanet WASP-76b. Credit: ESA

When light strikes the atmosphere all sorts of interesting things can happen. Water vapor can split sunlight into a rainbow arc of colors, corpuscular rays can stream through gaps in clouds like the light from heaven, and halos and sundogs can appear due to sunlight reflecting off ice crystals. And then there is the glory effect, which can create a colorful almost saint-like halo around objects.

March 31, 2024March 31, 2024 by Mark Thompson

The Search for the Perfect Coronagraph to Find Earth 2.0

Coronagraph allowing the direct imaging of exoplanets

Studying exoplanets is made more difficult by the light from the host star. Coronagraphs are devices that block out the star light and both JWST and Nancy Grace Roman Telescope are equipped with them. Current coronagraphs are not quite capable of seeing other Earths but work is underway to push the limits of technology and even science for a new, more advanced device. A new paper explores the quantum techniques that may one day allow us to make such observations.

February 29, 2024February 29, 2024 by Laurence Tognetti

Planetary Atmospheres: Why study them? What can they teach us about finding life beyond Earth?

Image of the faint, nitrogen atmosphere of the dwarf planet, Pluto, obtained by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015. (Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

Universe Today has surveyed the importance of studying impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, and comets, and what these fantastic scientific fields can teach researchers and space fans regarding the search for life beyond Earth. Here, we will discuss how planetary atmospheres play a key role in better understanding our solar system and beyond, including why researchers study planetary atmospheres, the benefits and challenges, what planetary atmospheres can teach us about finding life beyond Earth, and how upcoming students can pursue studying planetary atmospheres. So, why is it so important to study planetary atmospheres?

February 26, 2024February 26, 2024 by Evan Gough

If Exoplanets Have Lightning, it’ll Complicate the Search for Life

Lightning on exoplanets could mask some biosignatures and amplify others. Image Credit: NASA/T.Pyle

Discovering exoplanets is almost routine now. We’ve found over 5,500 exoplanets, and the next step is to study their atmospheres and look for biosignatures. The James Webb Space Telescope is leading the way in that effort. But in some exoplanet atmospheres, lightning could make the JWST’s job more difficult by obscuring some potential biosignatures while amplifying others.

December 31, 2023December 31, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

TRAPPIST-1c Isn’t the Exo-Venus We Were Hoping For. But Don’t Blame the Star

A recent study accepted to The Astrophysical Journal uses computer models to investigate why the exoplanet, TRAPPIST-1c, could not possess a thick carbon dioxide (CO2) atmosphere despite it receiving the same amount of solar radiation from its parent star as the planet Venus receives from our Sun, with the latter having a very thick carbon dioxide atmosphere. This study comes after a June 2023 study published in Nature used data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to ascertain that TRAPPIST-1c does not possess a carbon dioxide atmosphere. Both studies come as the TRAPPIST-1 system, which is located approximately 41 light-years from Earth and orbits its star in just 2.4 days, has received a lot of attention from the scientific community in the last few years due to the number of confirmed exoplanets within the system and their potential for astrobiology purposes.

December 14, 2023December 15, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

A Tiny Telescope is Revealing “Hot Jupiter” Secrets

CUTE spacecraft and an artist's impression of a hot Jupiter. (Credit: NASA/JPL, University of Colorado)

A recent study presented this week at the 2023 meeting of the American Geophysical Union discusses observations of “hot Jupiters” from the NASA-funded CubeSat mission known as the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE). Unlike most exoplanet-hunting telescopes, whose sizes are comparable to a small school bus, CUTE measures 36 centimeters (14 inches) in length, equivalent to the size of a cereal box. These findings come after members of the team, which consists of undergraduate and graduate students, published an overview paper about CUTE in The Astronomical Journal in January 2023 and results from CUTE observing WASP-189b in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in August 2023.

December 6, 2023December 6, 2023 by Evan Gough

ESA’s Ariel Mission is Approved to Begin Construction

An artist's impression of the ESA's Ariel space telescope. It'll examine 1,000 exoplanet atmospheres. Image Credit: ESA

We’re about to learn a lot more about exoplanets. The ESA has just approved the construction of its Ariel mission, which will give us our first large survey of exoplanet atmospheres. The space telescope will help us answer fundamental questions about how planets form and evolve.

October 27, 2023October 27, 2023 by Evan Gough

JWST Sees Four Exoplanets in a Single System

This artist’s rendering shows the star HR 8799 and one of its four planets, HR 8799c. It illustrates the system at an early stage of evolution. It also shows the star's dusty disk and rocky inner planets. Credit: Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics

When the JWST activated its penetrating infrared eyes in July 2022, it faced a massive wish-list of targets compiled by an eager international astronomy community. Distant, early galaxies, nascent planets forming in dusty disks, and the end of the Universe’s dark ages and its first light were on the list. But exoplanets were also on the list, and there were thousands of them beckoning to be studied.

But one distant solar system stood out: HR 8799, a system about 133 light-years away.

October 18, 2023October 18, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

An Exoplanet so Hot it has Clouds Made of Quartz

Artist illustration showing what WASP-17 b could look like based on data obtained from a myriad of ground- and space-based telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble, Webb, and the retired Spitzer space telescopes. This most recent study used MIRI (Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument) to identify nanocrystals of quartz within the clouds WASP-17 b. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and R. Crawford (STScI))

A recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters used data obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to identify the presence of quartz nanocrystals in the upper atmosphere of WASP-17 b, an exoplanet whose mass and radius are approximately 0.78 and 1.87 that of Jupiter, respectively, and is located approximately 1,324 light-years from Earth. WASP-17 b is classified as a “puffy” hot Jupiter due to its 3.7-day orbital period, meaning the extreme temperatures could cause unique chemical processes to occur within its atmosphere, but the astronomers were still surprised by the findings.