Aug 26,2022:NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first-ever clear evidence of the presence of carbon dioxide in a distant planet’s atmosphere. The planet named WASP-39b is orbiting a Sun-like star and is around 700 light years away from us and was originally discovered back in 2011.
The latest discovery gives insights into the planet’s composition and findings from the study were published in the Nature science journal. Previously, NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have revealed the presence of water vapour, sodium, and potassium in the planet’s atmosphere.
According to NASA, WASP-39b is a hot gas giant similar to Jupiter in our solar system. But its mass is the same as that of Saturn, and it has a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter’s. NASA notes that this is an extremely hot planet with temperatures of around 900 degrees Celsius, which also contributes to its puffiness. It orbits its star very closely, and it completes one revolution around its sun in just four Earth days. So yes, four days would be one a year on this particular planet.
