Nature<\/em> on March 27, provide insight into planet formation.<\/p>\n\u201cIt appears that every giant planet is different, and we\u2019re starting to see those differences thanks to JWST,\u201d said Jonathan Lunine, professor in the physical sciences at Cornell University and co-author of the study.<\/p>\n
The giant planets of our solar system exhibit a nearly perfect correlation between both overall composition and atmospheric composition and mass, said Jacob Bean, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago and lead author of the paper. Extrasolar planets show a much greater diversity of overall compositions, but scientists didn\u2019t know how varied their atmospheric compositions are, until this analysis of HD149026b \u2013 also known as Smertrios.<\/p>\n
Smertrios is super-enriched compared to its mass, Lunine said: \u201cIt\u2019s the mass of Saturn, but its atmosphere seems to have as much as 27 times the amount of heavy elements relative to its hydrogen and helium that we find in Saturn.\u201d<\/p>\n
This ratio, called metallicity \u2013 even though it includes many elements that are not metals \u2013 is useful for comparing a planet to its home star, or other planets in its system, Lunine said. Smertrios is the only planet known in this particular planetary system.<\/p>\n
Another key measurement is the ratio of carbon to oxygen in a planet\u2019s atmosphere, which reveals the \u201crecipe\u201d of original solids in a planetary system, Lunine said. For Smertrios, it\u2019s about 0.84 \u2013 higher than in our solar system. In our sun, it\u2019s a bit more than one carbon for every two oxygen atoms (0.55).<\/p>\n
While an abundance of carbon might seem favorable for chances of life, a high carbon to oxygen ratio actually means less water on a planet or in a planetary system \u2013 a problem for life as we know it.<\/p>\n
Smertrios is an interesting first case of atmospheric composition for this particular study, said Lunine, who has plans in place to observe five more giant exoplanets in the coming year using JWST. Many more observations are needed before astronomers can discover any patterns among giant planets or in systems with multiple giant planets or terrestrial planets to the compositional diversity astronomers are beginning to document.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe origin of this diversity is a fundamental mystery in our understanding of planet formation,\u201d Bean said. \u201cOur hope is that further atmospheric observations of extrasolar planets with JWST will quantify this diversity better and yield constraints on more complex trends that might exist.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An international team of astronomers has found the atmospheric compositions of giant planets out in the galaxy do not fit our own solar system trend. Using NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the researchers discovered that the atmosphere of exoplanet HD149026b, a \u2018hot Jupiter\u2019 orbiting a star comparable to our sun, is super-abundant in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":8804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/lmg-labmanager.s3.amazonaws.com\/assets\/articleNo\/30041\/aImg\/53929\/jwst-confirms-giant-planet-atmospheres-vary-widely-m.webp","fifu_image_alt":"JWST Confirms Giant Planet Atmospheres Vary Widely","footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8803,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8802\/revisions\/8803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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