Characterising exoplanet atmospheres is one of the primary challenges for the coming decades and absolutely essential for our understanding of these alien worlds. Join us today as we dive into some of the ways we can study these distant worlds from the comforts of our labs here on Earth.
Whether you’re a six-year-old scouring the backyard on Easter morning, or an exoplanet astronomer with observing time on the James Webb Space Telescope, nothing beats the feeling of finding what you’re looking for. So, you can imagine the authors of today’s paper were pretty excited when they received their transmission spectroscopy data of the sub-Neptune known as TOI-270d.
Today’s bite explores life on the vegetation red edge…and how we might find it on other worlds.
Moons are abundant within our own solar system, but astronomers have historically struggled to find moons (exomoons) within other systems beyond our own. Yet, today’s authors suggest that the James Webb Space Telescope may be the key for solving this missing exomoon problem.
In today’s bite, we’ll be exploring the turbulent skies of WISE 1049AB, one of the closest known systems to our own solar system. We’ll see how observations can reveal the nature of their atmospheres and how they can be used to better understand atmospheres of other giant planets.
We follow recipes for perfect cocktails, but we have yet to discover the recipe for sub-Neptune exoplanets. Today’s bite explores how hydrogen and silicates mix inside these mysterious worlds and what this tells us about their structure and evolution.