The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest and most powerful in human history, made the first observations.
IT media Cnet reported on the 26th (local time) that NASA has announced a pair of hot super-Earths as the first objects to be observed by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The first exoplanets targeted are ’55 Cancri (Cancri) e’, which is covered with lava sea, and ‘LHS 3844 b’, a hot planet with no atmosphere.
“These planets will provide a fantastic new perspective on Earth-like planets,” said Laura Kreidberg, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. It will be,” he said in a statement.
The JWST researchers will use James Webb’s high-precision spectroscopy to understand the geological diversity of galactic planets and the evolution of Earth-like rocky planets.
■ Exoplanet 1 ’55 Cancri e’
This planet is a super-hot super-Earth and is predicted to have lava-flowing oceans. It is called a super-Earth because it is a rocky planet similar in size to Earth. It is about 40 light-years away from Earth and has twice the diameter and 8.63 times the mass of Earth.
55 Cancri e is a very hot superheated planet with a distance of only about 241 km from its star. In particular, in the past, researchers announced that the surface of this planet is likely to be covered with graphite and diamonds, so it is also nicknamed the ‘diamond planet’.
“55 Cancrie could have a thick atmosphere dominated by oxygen and nitrogen,” Renyu Hu, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. will be able to,” he said
The researchers will use state-of-the-art infrared imaging technology, including JWST’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam) and mid-infrared equipment (MIRI), to measure the heat and meteorological phenomena emitted by the planet.
■ Exoplanet 2 ‘LHS 3844 b’
JWST’s second target is a super-Earth called LHS 3844 b, about 48 light-years from Earth. This planet is also hot, but cooler than the previous 55 Cancri e, is 2.25 times the mass of Earth, and is a red dwarf with no atmosphere.
Observations of the planet will provide a unique opportunity to analyze the hard rocks on the surface of exoplanets.
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“It turns out that the spectrum is different depending on the type of rock,” said Laura Creedberg. “You can see with the naked eye that granite has a brighter color than basalt. There are similar differences in the infrared radiation that rocks emit,” she explains, using spectroscopy to look at the rock composition that makes up the planet.
The researchers will use the JWST’s onboard mid-infrared instrumentation (MIRI) to capture the thermal emission spectrum of LHS 3844 b and then compare it to the rock’s spectrum to determine its composition. If the planet is volcanic, it is expected to capture traces of volcanic gas.