The NASA Webb Telescope analyzed the “chemical fingerprint” of the atmosphere of an exoplanet, an unprecedented fact

Since its launch in December 2021, the NASA’s James Webb Telescope never ceases to amaze us. The most recent discovery he made: the analysis of the “chemical fingerprint” of the atmosphere of an exoplanet.

It had never happened before. And this is just the beginning.

Thanks to Webb, NASA made a molecular and chemical profile of the atmosphere of a distant world, the WASP-39 b.

In the past, telescopes such as Hubble and Spitzer have revealed isolated compositions of this exoplanet, but recent Webb data reveal atoms, molecules, signs of active chemistry, and clouds.

WASP 39-b is known as a “hot Saturn,” a planet as massive as Saturn but in a tighter orbit than Mercury. This exoplanet orbits a star about 700 light years away from Earth.

Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, helped coordinate the research with NASA’s Webb Telescope.

“We are observing the exoplanet with multiple instruments that, together, provide a wide swath of the infrared spectrum and a panoply of chemical fingerprints inaccessible until this mission,” explained in a NASA statement. “Data like this is a game changer.”

Elements detected by NASA’s James Webb Telescope on the exoplanet WASP-39b

Specifically, these are some of the items detected:

• Sulfur dioxide.
• Sodium.
• Potassium.
• Water steam.
• Carbon dioxide.
• Carbon monoxide.
• Methane.
• Hydrogen sulfide.

As Kazumasa Ohno, a UC Santa Cruz exoplanet researcher who worked with Webb’s data, explains, “The abundance of sulfur relative to hydrogen indicated that the planet presumably experienced a significant buildup of planetesimals that can deliver these ingredients into the atmosphere.”

“The data,” Ohno added, “also indicates that oxygen is much more abundant than carbon in the atmosphere. This potentially indicates that WASP-39 b originally formed far from the central star.”

The discoveries made with the data from the James Webb Telescope will be published in five scientific articles, three already in press and two under review.

“We had predicted what the Webb Telescope would show us, but It was more accurate, more diverse, and more beautiful than I really thought it would be.” said Hannah Wakeford, an astrophysicist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. And it is just the beginning of all the discoveries that can be made.