Topic
Retention, loss, and observational detection of atmospheres on planets outside the solar system.
Cornell and Bristol researchers applied transmission strings to JWST data and found WASP-17b's atmosphere more extended on one side. The shape matches theoretical predictions, so the study is a first test of the method on one planet.
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WASP-189b, nearly 320 light-years away, has a magnesium-to-silicon ratio that closely matches its host star's, astronomers report. Teams that predict rocky-planet makeup from stellar chemistry now have a check, made on a giant planet.
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Brittany Miles's team used 11 hours of JWST spectra to watch water clouds thicken and thin on WISE 0855, the coldest known brown dwarf. The same spectra separate those cloud changes from gases stirred up by convection, two signals that older photometry blended together.
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University of Chicago researchers report Webb evidence of an atmosphere on HD 3167 b, a rocky planet with a 24-hour orbit. Planets that close to a star are expected to lose gas to stellar wind and high-energy light, so the result could help explain how rocky worlds keep their atmospheres.
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Helium reported escaping LHS 1140b, a habitable-zone planet 1.7 times Earth's size, may signal a long-lived secondary atmosphere around a red dwarf. The result is tenuous and the planet could still be a mini-Neptune, so its use as a test of whether red-dwarf worlds keep their air depends on confirmation.
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University of Maryland astronomers using Webb found ammonia on HATS-6 b and early temperatures near 120 C, against the 425 C usually cited. Their leading suspect is reflective cloud, and the planet's chemistry readings depend on that temperature.
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University of Chicago astronomers report that HD 3167 b, a super-Earth with a one-day orbit, has a dayside cooler than bare rock should allow. That makes it the coolest atmosphere case so far for a ten-planet program looking for the temperature at which lava worlds start to keep their atmospheres.
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Malte Jansen and colleagues derive the work that drives Earth's winds from two atmospheric quantities and find that warming's effects on them almost cancel, while the same simulations push storm tracks poleward.
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Astronomers at Trinity College Dublin report that two components account for most of what changes in SIMP 0136's rotating spectrum, a decomposition they hope to refine for fainter brown dwarfs.
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A new model says molten surfaces meter outgassing slowly enough to match escape losses for billions of years, which reshuffles the target list for follow-up spectroscopy of hot rocky planets.
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