A distant exoplanet appears to sport a sooty atmosphere that is confusing the scientists who recently spotted it.
The Jupiter-size world, detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), doesn’t have the familiar helium-hydrogen combination we are used to in atmospheres from our solar systemnor other common molecules, like water, methane or carbon dioxide.
rather, the planet seems to have soot clouds near the top of the atmosphere that condense into diamonds deeper in the atmosphere. This kind of overall atmosphere, which is made of helium and carbon, has never been spotted on another planet. What’s even weirder is that its host star is not even a normal star.”This was an absolute surprise,” study co-author Peter Gaoa staff scientist at the Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory, said in a
PSR J2322-2650b’s origin story is an enigma. It is indeed only a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from its star – nearly 100 times closer than Earth is to the sun. That’s even stranger when you consider that the gas giant planets of our solar system are much farther out – Jupiter is 484 million miles (778 million km) from the sun, for example. The planet whips around its star in only 7.8 hours, and it’s shaped like a lemon because the gravitational forces of the pulsar are pulling extremely strongly on the planet. At first glance,it appears PSR J2322-2650b could have a similar formation scenario as “black widow” systems,where a sunlike star is next to a small pulsar. Related reading
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI))
Lemon-Shaped Planet Discovered Orbiting Pulsar
Formation mystery