Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a unique exoplanet system, dubbed “YSES-1”, just 310 light-years from Earth. The team, led by the Space Telescope Science Institute, has captured images of two giant exoplanets and their surrounding atmospheres.
The YSES-1 system features two massive planets, each several times larger than Jupiter, which orbit a young, sun-like star. Using the telescope’s Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec), researchers directly observed the planets’ atmospheres, providing the most detailed dataset of a multi-planet system to date.
The team found silicate clouds in the mid-infrared spectrum of one of the planets, YSES-1c, which are composed of sand-like particles. This is the strongest silicate absorption feature observed in an exoplanet yet. Additionally, the atmosphere contains iron, which may fall from the clouds as rain.
The discovery of these unique features raises more questions than answers about how the planets formed and evolved. The team’s analysis suggests that the newly discovered disk around YSES-1b is long-lived, unlike other observed disks, and the widely separated planets cannot be explained by current formation theories.
This groundbreaking study highlights the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope to characterize exoplanet atmospheres and provides new insights into the atmospheric physics and formation processes of distant giants.
Source: https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-webb-exoplanet-sand-cloud-iron-rain-2083475