Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2025

MARCH-APRIL 2025 T he CRIRES Instrument, located on the Nasmyth-platform of VLT Unit Telescope 1, Antu. CRIRES is the cryo- genic high-resolution infrared echelle spectrograph, which provides a re- solving power of up to 100,000 in the spectral range from 1 to 5 microns. CRIRES can boost all scientific applica- tions aiming at fainter objects, higher spatial (extended sources), spectral and temporal resolution. CRIRES also allows astronomers to make use of the innovative ‘spectral imaging’ method. [ESO] weather on these distant worlds and analyse their atmospheres. “Un- derstanding the dynamics of these exoplanets helps us explore mecha- nisms such as heat re- distribution and chem- ical processes, improv- ing our understanding of planet formation and potentially shed- ding light on the ori- gins of our own Solar System,” says David Cont from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, and a co-author of the paper. Interestingly, at pres- ent, studies like this can only be done by ground-based observa- tories, as the instru- A stronomers have measured supersonic jet winds on WASP-127b, a giant gas planet located about 520 light-years from Earth. It is the fastest jetstream of its kind ever measured in the Universe, with speeds up to 9 km per second. The team mapped the weather of WASP-127b using the CRIRES+ in- strument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT). [ESO] ure only the mass and the radius of planets outside the Solar System. Today, telescopes like ESO’s VLT al- ready allow scientists to map the ments currently on space telescopes do not have the necessary velocity precision. ESO’s Extremely Large Tel- escope — which is under construc- tion close to the VLT in Chile — and its ANDES instrument will allow re- searchers to delve even deeper into the weather patterns on far-away planets. “This means that we can likely resolve even finer details of the wind patterns and expand this research to smaller, rocky planets,” Nortmann concludes. !