New data from James Webb Space Telescope reveals an exoplanet atmosphere as never seen before

Among the unprecedented revelations is the first detection in an exoplanet atmosphere of sulfur dioxide, a molecule produced from chemical reactions triggered by high-energy light from the planet’s parent star. ‘I see this as a really promising outlook for advancing our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres with JWST.’Webb also saw carbon dioxide at higher resolution, providing twice as much data as reported from its previous observations. The data also indicates that oxygen is much more abundant than carbon in the atmosphere, suggesting that WASP-39 b originally formed far away from the central star. To see light from WASP-39 b, JWST tracked the planet as it passed in front of its star, allowing some of the star’s light to filter through the planet’s atmosphere. The new studies on WASP-39 b are: