Written by Samah Labib Wednesday, October 18, 2023 03:00 AM Discover a telescope James Webb Space (JWST) reported that 1,000-mile-per-hour winds are propelling a shower of tiny quartz crystals through the hot, silicate-enhanced atmosphere of a distant gas giant planet called WASP-17b, according to Space.com.
Daniel Grant from the University of Bristol in Britain and leader of a new study on this discovery, said in a statement: We have learned from Hubble Space Telescope observations that there must be an aerosol of small particles that form clouds or fog – in the atmosphere of WASP-17b. But we didn’t expect it to be made of quartz.
WASP-17b is an incredible world, as WASP-17b orbits every 3.7 days at a distance of only 7.8 million kilometers from its star, which is located 1,300 light-years from Earth, and is so close to its stellar host that its temperature during the day rises to 1,500. Celsius, and because it is so hot on this exoplanet, the world has actually expanded to about 285,000 km, which is almost twice the diameter of Jupiter. Thus, its mass is only about half of Jupiter’s total mass.
WASP-17b is one of the most “bloated” planets known – and its swollen atmosphere makes it a great target for the James Webb Space Telescope.
Grant and his fellow astronomers watched WASP-17b transit its star using JWST’s mid-infrared instrument (MIRI), and when the exoplanet moved in front of its star from the view of the James Webb Space Telescope, MIRI detected starlight that was being blocked by the bulge planet itself but absorbed by it. Partly the world’s atmosphere.
Such measurements result in what’s called a transmission spectrum, where certain wavelengths are blocked by certain molecules in the atmosphere, Space reports.
Like Jupiter, WASP-17b appears to be composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. In addition, MIRI detected carbon dioxide and water vapor, and at a wavelength of 8.6 microns, the absorption signature of pure quartz crystals.
In combination with previous observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, these crystals were judged to be shaped like pointed hexagonal prisms like quartz on Earth, but only 10 nanometers in size.
