Comments
iforgotmymittens t1_ixezoh9 wrote
I’m certainly not getting in front of it, I’m not photogenic.
lethal_moustache t1_ixf6wnr wrote
You'll be out of focus if you are anywhere near it, so you have that going for you.
MoseSchruteJunior t1_ixfb2h6 wrote
Which is nice.
autotldr t1_ixdmon5 wrote
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 90%. (I'm a bot)
> To see light from WASP-39 b, Webb tracked the planet as it passed in front of its star, allowing some of the star's light to filter through the planet's atmosphere.
> "The abundance of sulfur hydrogen indicated that the planet presumably experienced significant accretion of planetesimals that can deliver to the atmosphere," said Kazumasa Ohno, a UC Santa Cruz exoplanet researcher who worked on Webb data.
> In so precisely parsing an exoplanet atmosphere, the Webb telescope's instruments performed well beyond scientists' expectations - and promise a new phase of exploration among the broad variety of exoplanets in the galaxy.
Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: atmosphere^#1 Webb^#2 planet^#3 exoplanet^#4 star^#5
StaleCanole t1_ixg3m4l wrote
How do these instruments perform beyond a scientists expectations. Are they doing things they werent designed for?
InSight89 t1_ixg7rs0 wrote
>How do these instruments perform beyond a scientists expectations.
Expectations does not equal capability. These instruments aren't working better than they are capable of, that would be impossible. However, there's a lot of variables that may alter the capabilities of these instruments (think vibrations of rocket, deployment, insertion accuracy that can alter the performance of these instruments etc) and it turns out that those variables had minimal impact.
StaleCanole t1_ixgbeid wrote
Thank you!
NormP t1_ixdpyaj wrote
A hot Saturn.
TheRiverOtter t1_ixdx03l wrote
Saturn is already pretty hot. Those rings? HRRRNNNGGHHH
LeslieKnopeOSRS t1_ixe0c5e wrote
If you like then you gotta out a ring on it.
PasswordIsTaco3 t1_ixe14z8 wrote
It seems like there needs to be a Uranus joke here.
Gygax_the_Goat t1_ixf0k8d wrote
Upyerbum
ComprehendReading t1_ixg9dhf wrote
Join now and start finding hot planets in your local group
BrassBass t1_ixfaqsu wrote
That sounds like a sex act in space.
CampEmbarrassed170 t1_ixedhrg wrote
Would be great if I saw the exoplanet’s actual image and not some artists’ impressions.
Euripidaristophanist t1_ixeekwy wrote
There is no image, there's just a spectrograph.
[deleted] t1_ixf9bji wrote
[deleted]
WhatAGoodDoggy t1_ixf8bm8 wrote
Unfortunately we won't have anything that can visually resolve a planet with any level of detail for a very long time.
Acceptable-Ticket242 t1_ixf9cpg wrote
Lets be real, probably never. Theres only so much advancement that can be made with even the most advanced telescopes we have, its physical limitations, not computing power or digital. Most likely we will always be left to illustrations.
barath_s t1_ixg079c wrote
Here's a treat for you.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/webb-space-telescope-snaps-its-first-photo-of-an-exoplanet-20220901/
But you might not be able to image wasp39b even with JWSTC hits its full stride
e: The first exoplanet ever directly imaged
onFilm t1_ixg8v44 wrote
You're severely understimating our capabilities. Making an array of telescopes in a large enough area would allow us to resolve far away objects pretty easily. We already do this here on earth, and even as we circle the sun, now imagine if we managed to get telescopes in an array much larger than our straight path around the sun.
space_fly t1_ixgudy0 wrote
If you ever used a projector, you might have noticed that the further you move away from the screen, the dimmer it gets because light is spread over a bigger surface are.
Observing far places in space, we basically have the same problem. The biggest limitation is that the light reaching our telescopes is very dim and spread out. This is why there's a lot of effort to build larger and larger telescopes... a higher surface area means more light reaching us.
The second big issue is that bright sources of light like our sun makes it much more difficult to observe things that are dim. Also, the atmosphere is blocking certain wavelengths of light. Of course, these issues have already been solved with Hubble and other telescopes that are in space.
The biggest technological limitation is how to build a larger mirror, and how to send it in space. JWST had some clever ideas, like breaking the mirror into multiple segments that would unfold.
Some interesting ideas being explored right now are to use big bodies like the sun as lenses, or having an array of mirrors spread out in space that would focus light to a single point where the sensor would be. If you remember that picture of a black hole we got not long ago, that was done by building a telescope array that builds on that idea, by observing from multiple points on earth at the same time and then building a picture out of that.
Personally, I think JWST's successor will still be a monolith structure, having multiple mirror satellites would get pretty expensive, and the logistics of getting them aligned into position and maintaining that alignment are pretty complex. But it might be sent up in multiple parts that would get assembled in orbit.
WikiSummarizerBot t1_ixgues3 wrote
>The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a large telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes. The EHT project combines data from several very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) stations around Earth, which form a combined array with an angular resolution sufficient to observe objects the size of a supermassive black hole's event horizon.
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barath_s t1_ixfzwjg wrote
Just jump on a rocket and head 700 light years in the direction of Virgo constellation. /s
We don't have the ability to image most exoplanets.
> The planet’s discovery, reported in 2011, was made based on ground-based detections of the subtle, periodic dimming of light from its host star as the planet transits, or passes in front of the star.
That said, JWST did take a picture of a planet 7x size of Jupiter 400 light years away.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/webb-space-telescope-snaps-its-first-photo-of-an-exoplanet-20220901/
They think JWST may be able to take more such exoplanet pics, down to maybe even 1/3rd Jupter's mass. However Wasp39b is about 0,28 jupiter's mass, 700 liht years away and super close to its star (<5% of the distance from the earth to the sun, or about 1/10th the distance of mercury. Might not be feasible even when JWST reaching full flow)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASP-39b
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/5673/wasp-39-b/
DaemonAnts t1_ixdraw3 wrote
The artist illustrations keep getting better and better.
rendrr t1_ixek2ub wrote
One day we might get a news about a rocky planet with "potential life markers" and it's gonna be mundane and everyone will quickly forget about it.
MannerAlarming6150 t1_ixewsh4 wrote
I wonder if they can determine whether it's a life marker or actual factual life depending on what they pick up.
Of course, even if they determined that "yep, this is 100% organic life", they are probably still dead because of how long the light took to get to us. Sad.
Rustyflyntlock t1_ixf3eml wrote
Oxygen in sufficient quantities isn't too bad of an indicator, from what I understand? There are other natural processes that create it, but usually it winds up binding up with other things rather than collecting in quantities like we see on Earth. Usually.
Or so i've read. I'm not an expert. I just have google and was curious a while back. May or may not apply to gas worlds. Periods of specific activity may create false positives, but seem to recall the article saying those are usually brief, geologically speaking.
Of course, if the life isn't oxygen breathing/producing then idk.
rendrr t1_ixfeqgx wrote
Yeah. Basically it's Oxygen and other compounds usually created by life. But there is not a 100% "It's life" test, because those chemicals can also be created by other non-organic methods. The combination of detected "signs of life" would be a strong candidate, but never a certainty. Then scientists will spend next 50 or so years looking at the planet and doing more tests and maybe one day manifest "yeah, it's probably life." It's gonna be slow burn.
pathanb t1_ixgb09y wrote
We are looking for exoplanets relatively close by, in astronomical terms. This specific star is about 285 light years away according to the article, barely a rounding error in evolution's timescale. If we see life, there is most probably life still there - we just can't interact with it in any meaningful way.
Tiabb t1_ixeyrgv wrote
Because it will be basically impossible to confirm. We had the same thing happen with Venus but most potential life markers have some natural non-organic explanation too.
8andahalfby11 t1_ixetalg wrote
It's frustrating, I went through the docket of Webb exoplanet observations and most of them, including ones in systems with known 'habitable zone' worlds, point the telescope at near-star gas giants like this one. Wish the mission team would prioritize juicier targets.
RazzmatazzNatural632 t1_ixgndi0 wrote
I agree, but I think there's more to it. I believe such details would require much more study and specific unorthodox techniques with webbs capabilities.
Even though it has tools, there's still an amount of trial and error in such analysis. I say this as an ameture astronomer. I know what I'm doing with a new telescope, but still have to use technique to tease out details, something that takes time to learn.
postart777 t1_ixfncgg wrote
Always upvote the Webb telescope.
thebestever-battling t1_ixdjkao wrote
webb project is a gov't endeavor everyone can get behind