Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2023

35 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023 ASTRO PUBLISHING cated that the planet presumably experi- enced significant ac- cretion of planetes- imals that can deliver [these ingredients] to the atmosphere,” said Kazumasa Ohno, a UC Santa Cruz exo- planet researcher who worked on Webb data. “The data also indicates that the oxy- gen is a lot more abundant than the carbon in the atmos- phere. This potentially indicates that WASP- 39 b originally formed far away from the cen- tral star.” In so precisely parsing an exoplanet atmos- phere, the Webb tele- scope’s instruments performed well be- yond scientists’ expec- tations – and promise a new phase of explo- ration among the broad variety of exo- planets in the galaxy. “These results are a confirmation of the ability of the JWST in- struments to probe the atmospheres of all types of exoplanets, including small and rocky worlds,” says Enric Pallé, IAC re- searcher who partici- pated in the study. “We are going to be able to see the big picture of exoplanet atmos- pheres,” said Laura Flagg, a re- searcher at Cornell University and a member of the international team. “It is incredibly exciting to know that everything is going to be rewritten. That is one of the best parts of being a scientist.” ! perhaps others – formed out of the disk of gas and dust surrounding the parent star in its younger years. WASP-39 b’s chemical inventory sug- gests a history of smashups and mergers of smaller bodies called planetesimals to create an eventual goliath of a planet. “The abundance of sulfur [relative to] hydrogen indi- University of Bristol. Having such a complete roster of chemical ingredi- ents in an exoplanet atmosphere also gives scientists a glimpse of the abundance of different elements in relation to each other, such as car- bon-to-oxygen or potassium-to-oxy- gen ratios. That, in turn, provides insight into how this planet – and