Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2024

22 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024 ASTRO PUBLISHING by NASA/ESA/CSA Margaret W. Carruthers & Christine Pulliam R esearchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected evidence for quartz nanocrystals in the high-altitude clouds of WASP-17 b, a hot Jupiter exoplanet 1,300 light-years from Earth. The detection, which was uniquely possible with MIRI (Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument), marks the first time that silica (SiO 2 ) particles have been spotted in an exoplanet atmosphere. “We were thrilled!” said David Grant, a re- searcher at the Uni- versity of Bristol in the UK and first author Webb detects tiny quartz crystals in clouds of hot gas giant