Webb also revealed the planet is a few hundred degrees warmer than Earth, so if clouds are spotted, it may mean the planet is more like Venus - which has a carbon dioxide atmosphere and is constantly shrouded in thick clouds.Īlthough LHS 475 b is closer to its star than any planet in our solar system, the red dwarf star is less than half the temperature of the Sun, so the researchers project it still could have an atmosphere. Decades after researchers proposed what became known as the James Webb space telescope, the first colour images have landed and with them a tantalising glimpse of the observatory’s power.
The team did, on the other hand, rule out the planet having a thick methane-dominated atmosphere, like Saturn's moon Titan. Research co-leader Jacob Lustig-Yaeger, from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said a pure carbon dioxide would be incredibly compact and challenging to detect. The rocky planet, LHS 475 b, measures 99 percent of Earth's diameter and is 41 light-years away, in the Octans constellation.īut it is not yet clear if the planet has an atmosphere at all, let alone one like Earth, and researchers also could not rule out one made of purely carbon dioxide. Astronomers have detected a crucial carbon molecule in space for the first time using the James Webb Space Telescope. The new James Webb Space Telescope has discovered its first planet orbiting another star - an exoplanet. Illustration of exoplanet LHS 475 b and its star.
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