For the first time, the James Webb Space Telescope has found evidence of carbon dioxide in a planet's atmosphere outside of our solar system. The exoplanet WASP-39 b, which was discovered in 2011, provides the evidence. WASP-39 b, a hot gas giant planet 700 light-years from Earth, revolves around a star similar to the Sun. According to NASA, the discovery offers crucial new information on the planet's formation and makeup. Additionally, it implies that carbon dioxide may be detectable and measurably present in the thinner atmospheres of tiny rocky planets using even the most powerful satellite telescope.
The Webb space telescope's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument was used for the detection by the study team. The researchers claimed that their discovery of a little hill between 4.1 and 4.6 microns in the exoplanet's spectra was the first conclusive and comprehensive proof that carbon dioxide was there.
"As soon as I saw the data on my screen, the enormous carbon dioxide feature caught my attention. Zafar Rustamkulov, a member of the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science team that carried out this analysis, described it as a remarkable event that marked the crossing of a significant threshold in the field of exoplanet sciences.
No other observatory had, up until now, detected minute variations in the brightness of numerous distinct colours in the 3 to 5.5 micron region in an extraterrestrial transmission spectrum. It is thought that this portion of the spectrum is essential for determining how abundant gases like methane, water, and carbon dioxide are. Many distinct kinds of exoplanets are thought to contain these gases.
The discovery of a distinct carbon dioxide signature, according to Natalie Batalha of the University of California, who headed the project, gives hope that atmospheres on smaller, terrestrial-sized planets will also be discovered.
The atmospheric makeup of planets should be studied carefully because it may carry clues to their origins and evolution. The amount of solid and gaseous material that went into the formation of the planet, according to researchers, might be ascertained by analysing the carbon dioxide feature in WASP-39 b.
