Discovery Alert: Water Vapor Detected on Super Neptune Exoplanet

Water vapor in the atmosphere of planet TOI-674 b

This newly found planet, a bit larger than Neptune and orbiting a red-dwarf star roughly 150 light-years away. This size places it in an exclusive club: exoplanets, or planets around different stars, recognized to have water vapor in their atmospheres. Several questions linger, such as how much water vapor its atmosphere holds. However, TOI-674 b’s atmosphere is much easier to observe than numerous exoplanets, making it a prime target for greater observation. TOI-674 b is considered a super Neptune exoplanet.

How did they find the water vapor on a super Neptune exoplanet?

The planet’s relationship, size, and distance to its star make it especially easily accessible to spaceborne telescopes. At 150 light-years, it is regarded as “neighboring” in astronomical terms. The star itself, fairly cool and less than half as large as our Sun. It cannot be seen from Earth with the naked eye. However, this as well equates right into a benefit for astronomers. As the somewhat big planet– in a size-class called “super Neptune”– goes across the face of its small star. Starlight beaming through its atmosphere can be more easily evaluated by our telescopes. Those furnished with unique instruments called spectrographs — including the just-launched James Webb Space Telescope– can spread this light into a spectrum, exposing which gases are present in the planet’s atmosphere.

The finding grew from a partnership between the reliable Hubble Space Telescope and TESS, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, launched in 2018. The planet was first located by TESS. After that, its light spectrum was quantified by Hubble. Data from the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope likewise helped astronomers tease out a few of the planet’s atmospheric components. If the Webb telescope, once it is up and running, is switched on TOI-674 b, it must have the ability to analyze the planet’s atmosphere in far more detail.

Only three other Neptune-sized exoplanets have had conditions of their atmospheres revealed until now, though the development of telescopes like Webb declares a golden era in the study of exoplanet atmospheres.

Fun facts

The brand-new planet can claim membership in another exclusive team: inhabitants of the so-called “Neptune Desert.” TOI-674 b orbits its tiny star so closely that a “year” on this planet, when around the star, takes less than two days. However, amongst the countless exoplanets verified in our galaxy up until now, a strange pattern has emerged. Planets in the size-class in between Neptune and Jupiter are exceptionally uncommon in orbits of 3 days or much less. The rarity of such planets, and the analysis of those that do show up, might provide essential clues to the formation of planetary systems as a whole– including our very own.

The discoverers

An international team of scientists, led by Jonathan Brande of the University of Kansas, contributed to the brand-new research of water vapor on TOI-674 b, which has been submitted to an academic journal. They featured scientists from the NASA Ames Research Center, from IPAC and other research centers at Caltech.

Read the original article on Scitechdaily.

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