TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Telescop James Webb discovered winds of thousands of miles per hour blowing showers of tiny quartz crystals through a torrid atmosphere containing silicate in planet a distant gas giant called WASP-17b.
“We know from observations [Teleskop Luar Angkasa] Hubble that there must be aerosols in the form of small particles that form clouds or fog, in the atmosphere of WASP-17b,” said Daniel Grant from the University of Bristol in England and leader of a new study regarding the discovery, as quoted by Space last week. However, the researchers did not think that the particles were made of quartz.
Quartz is a form of silicate, which is a mineral rich in silica and oxygen. Silicates are very common. All rocky bodies in the solar system are made of silicates, and silicates have previously been detected in the atmospheres of hot exoplanets Jupiter. However, in that case the olivine and pyroxene crystals are more complex and rich in magnesium.
“We fully expected to see magnesium silicate,” said Hannah Wakeford from Bristol. “But what we’re looking at is most likely the building blocks, namely the tiny seed particles needed to form the larger silicate grains we find on cooler exoplanets and brown dwarfs.”
Sekilas planet WASP-17b
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The planet orbits every 3.7 days at a distance of just 7.8 million kilometers from its star, which is 1,300 light years from Earth. WASP-17b is so close to its parent star that daytime temperatures reach 1,500 degrees Celsius.
Because the atmosphere on this exoplanet is so hot, the planet’s actual area has expanded to about 285,000 kilometers, which is twice the diameter of Jupiter. although WASP-17b only has about half the mass of Jupiter. WASP-17b is one of the “swolliest” planets ever known — and its swollen atmosphere makes it a good target for the James Webb Space Telescope.
In this research, Grant and fellow astronomers observed WASP-17b passing by its star using JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). As the exoplanet moves in front of its star from JWST’s perspective, MIRI detects starlight that is blocked by the swollen planet itself, but partially absorbed by the world’s atmosphere. The measurements produce what is called a transmission spectrum, in which certain wavelengths are blocked by certain atmospheric molecules.
Grant explains how silicate crystals first became embedded in planetary atmospheres. “WASP-17b is very hot and the pressure at which quartz crystals form in the high atmosphere is only about a thousandth of what we experience at the Earth’s surface,” he said. According to him, in conditions like this, solid crystals can form directly from gas, without going through the liquid phase first.
These findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The 15-page journal was published on October 20, 2023.
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2023-10-23 09:42:20
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