Other attributes
A raging dust storm has been observed on a planet outside our Solar System for the first time.
It was detected on the exoplanet known as VHS 1256b, which is about 40 light-years from Earth and circles two stars at a great distance: four times the distance of Pluto from the Sun. It was first identified in 2015 by the UK-developed Vista telescope in Chile. It's what's termed a "super Jupiter" - a planet similar to the gas giant in our own Solar System, but a lot bigger, perhaps 12 to 18 times the mass.
A team of researchers, led by Brittany Miles of the University of Arizona, observing with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed silicate cloud features in VHS 1256b’s atmosphere. The atmosphere is constantly rising, mixing, and moving during its 22-hour day, bringing hotter material up and pushing colder material down. The team also made extraordinarily clear detections of water, methane, and carbon monoxide with Webb’s data, and found evidence of carbon dioxide. This is the largest number of molecules ever identified all at once on a planet outside our solar system.
It took the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope to make the discovery using its Mid-Infrared Instrument (Miri), part-built in the UK, and its Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NirSpec). What they did was tease apart the light coming from VHS 1256b into its component colours as a way to discern the composition of the atmosphere.
