James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

NASA’s Webb Identifies Methane In an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere (Artist Impression)

Catch a whiff of this. Webb made a definitive detection of methane gas in the atmosphere of “warm Jupiter” WASP-80 b. Like the name suggests, the planet is similar in size to Jupiter, but with much warmer temperatures. At 163 light-years away, WASP-80 b is very far from us. But it orbits very close to its parent star, with a year of only 3 Earth-days! To study the planet’s atmosphere, Webb observed how the combined light from the star and the planet was affected as WASP-80 b moved in front of and behind its star. The science team then created spectra, or measurements of how much light was blocked or emitted by the planet's atmosphere at different wavelengths. These measurements inform scientists of the chemical composition of the exoplanet, as well as what that tells us about the planet’s birth, growth and evolution. Hear directly from the researchers about their discovery in the latest Webb blog post: blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2023/11/22/nasas-webb-identifies-meth... This image: An artist’s rendering of the warm exoplanet WASP-80 b whose color may appear bluish to human eyes due to the lack of high-altitude clouds and the presence of atmospheric methane identified by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, similar to the planets Uranus and Neptune in our own solar system. Image credit: NASA. Image description: Illustration of a cloudy, striped purple planet on a dark starry background. Two lines connect from the planet to a circle filled with methane molecules. Text on graphic: “Webb Detects Methane in a Distant Planet’s Atmosphere.” Image & Description by NASA