James Webb Space Telescope detects carbon dioxide in an exoplanet’s atmosphere

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected evidence of carbon dioxide in a planetary atmosphere outside of our solar system.

According to NASA’s press release, WASP-39 b–the name of the planet whose atmosphere was found to contain C02–orbits a Sun-like star about 700 light-years away from Earth, and has a diameter of roughly 1.3 times greater than Jupiter’s. NASA said the discovery offers evidence that “Webb may be able to detect and measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets,” and added that previous observations from other telescopes “revealed the presence of water vapor, sodium, and potassium” in WASP-39-b’s atmosphere.

The discovery marks the first time that carbon dioxide has been detected on an exoplanet and was made using Webb's NIRSpec instrument, a spectrograph that splits incoming light into spectra resembling barcodes that reveal how the observed objects absorb light.