Atmosphere

Reconstructing ancient climates is murky business. Cores of sediment or ice contain records of temperatures that date back hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, but typically only near Earth’s surface or in the ocean. Now, by measuring rare oxygen isotopes, a team of geochemists has developed a way to deduce long-ago global temperatures 10 kilometers up in the atmosphere, creating, in effect, a paleo–weather balloon. The technique will help scientists study past…

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have given us direct confirmation that some alien worlds have clouds of rock.The telescope has directly detected silicate clouds in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf – the first time, according to an international team of astronomers, that such a detection has been made in a planetary-mass companion outside the Solar System.The complete findings, the team says, constitute the best spectrum yet for a planetary mass-object. These results could not only help us better…

The can do much more than produce of the universe. The observatory has, for the first time, of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet that's not in our solar system. It detected the gas on WASP-39 b, a gas giant that's orbiting a star some 700 light years away. The Hubble and Spitzer telescopes previously detected water vapor, sodium and potassium in the planet's atmosphere. But JWST has more powerful and sensitive infrared capabilities and was able to pick up the signature of carbon dioxide as well. Catch your…

The James Webb Space Telescope has, for the first time, detected evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. The evidence has been spotted on the exoplanet WASP-39 b, which was discovered in 2011. Located some 700 light-years from Earth, WASP-39 b is a hot gas giant planet that orbits a Sun-like star. According to NASA, the finding gives important insights into the formation and composition of the planet. In addition, it also suggests that the most powerful space telescope may be…

An early – and exciting – science result from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was announced today: the first unambiguous detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. This is the first detailed evidence for carbon dioxide ever detected in a planet outside our Solar System.The planet is named WASP-39b and is a hot gas giant with a mass roughly that of Saturn, in a very close-in orbit of a Sun-like star 700 light-years away.The planet was discovered in 2011 by the WASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets)…

This illustration shows what exoplanet WASP-39 b could look like, based on the current understanding of the planet.WASP-39 b is a hot, puffy gas giant with a mass 0.28 times Jupiter (0.94 times Saturn) and a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter, orbiting just 0.0486 astronomical units (4,500,000 miles) from its star. The star, WASP-39, is fractionally smaller and less massive than the Sun. Because it is so close to its star, WASP-39 b is very hot and is likely to be tidally locked, with one side facing the star at all…

The James Webb Space Telescope has clearly detected carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time. The find marks a milestone for the telescope’s goal of analyzing distant planets, which could eventually help discover signs of extraterrestrial life.One of James Webb’s key science goals is to study the composition of the atmosphere of exoplanets, with the hopes of ultimately finding ones that could host life. The main method the telescope uses to do this is transmission spectroscopy.Essentially, every…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain While the Asian monsoon brings rain that is vital for the agricultural economy of the vast region, it is also known to suck up into the upper atmosphere chemical pollutants that accelerate climate change. …

Location of Ong Valley. (a) Cropped USGS 1:250 000 scale topographic map of Miller Range, Antarctica, showing the location of Ong Valley. The red rectangle indicates the location of Ong Valley opening perpendicular to Argosy Glacier. (b) WorldView 2 satellite image of Ong Valley, Antarctica (© 2016 Maxar). The dots indicate sampling sites for pit and ice core (orange), Middle drift surface boulders (cyan), and lateral moraine boulders (blue). The…

Once a year, from mid-July to late August, Earth passes through a cosmic junk heap that pelts our planet with thousands of tiny space rocks no wider than a grain of sand. We call this annual event the Perseid meteor shower – or simply the Perseids.  This year, the Perseids peak in the dark hours between 11 August and 12. Unfortunately, the fact that there's a bright full moon around the same time will dampen the show.You may be able to see 10-20 meteors per hour during the peak, according to NASA – down from the 50 to 60…