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Wasp 94a B

All articles tagged with #wasp 94a b

space14 days ago•14 min saved

Rock Clouds Wake in the Morning, Clear at Night on Distant Gas Giant, JWST Finds

JWST observations of WASP-94A b reveal a day-night atmospheric cycle: the planet’s morning limb is cooler and cloudier due to mineral silicate clouds forming at low pressure, while the evening limb is hotter and clearer with stronger water absorption. The clouds form and evaporate as air circulates from night to day and back, a rock-based weather system on a tidally locked gas giant about 700 light-years away. This limb-resolved spectroscopy highlights why averaging spectra can mislead about atmospheric composition and demonstrates JWST's ability to map exoplanet weather.

via Space Daily|

#clouds #exoplanets #jwst

science2 months ago•12 min saved

Two-Faced Weather on a Distant World Upends Exoplanet Chemistry

JWST’s limb-resolved spectroscopy of the tidally locked exoplanet WASP-94A b reveals a morning sky thick with vaporized magnesium silicate clouds (sand) and a clear evening sky, driven by strong equatorial winds that shuttle clouds from day to night. This two-hemisphere view shows that averaging light over the whole planet previously biased atmospheric readings, overestimating oxygen by ~100x; the corrected enrichment is only ~3–5x solar. The finding demonstrates that exoplanet atmospheres may be dynamic and two-faced, prompting a re-evaluation of many past measurements and encouraging limb-resolved studies on more worlds.

via Space Daily|

#clouds-and-winds #exoplanet-atmospheres #jwst

science2 months ago•7 min saved

JWST maps contrasting day-night weather on a distant hot gas giant

JWST studied WASP-94A b, a hot, tidally locked gas giant about 690 light-years away, using limb-resolved spectroscopy during transit to compare its morning and evening limbs. The morning limb is cloudier with high-altitude aerosols; the evening limb is clearer and shows water vapor, driven by strong equatorial winds and a day–night temperature difference around 450 K. Averaging the limbs biases atmospheric composition estimates (e.g., oxygen enrichment and metallicity), highlighting the need to account for day-night asymmetries in exoplanet studies and to refine models to mitigate these biases.

via Ars Technica|

#atmospheres #exoplanets #jwst