NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope made the first identification of sulfur dioxide in an exoplanet’s atmosphere. Its presence can only be explained by photochemistry - chemical reactions triggered by high-energy particles of starlight. Photochemistry is essential to processes on Earth key to life like photosynthesis and the generation of our ozone layer. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt; Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian/Melissa Weiss
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope made the first identification of sulfur dioxide in an exoplanet's atmosphere. Its presence can only be explained by photochemistry - chemical reactions triggered by high-energy particles of starlight. Photochemistry is essential to processes on Earth key to life like photosynthesis and the generation of our ozone layer. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt; Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian/Melissa Weiss - NASA's James Webb Space Telescope just scored another first: a molecular and chemical profile of a distant world's skies. This is shown in five new articles by an international team of scientists, including Jean-Michel Désert, Hinna Shivkumar and Saugata Barat from the University of Amsterdam are soon to be published in leading science magazines. While Webb and other space telescopes, including NASA's Hubble and Spitzer, previously have revealed isolated ingredients of this broiling planet's atmosphere, the new readings from Webb provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds. The latest data also gives a hint of how these clouds might look up close: broken up rather than a single, uniform blanket over the planet.
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