Astronomers See Water Atmosphere on Exoplanet With James Webb Space Telescope #shorts #news #NASA

The universe's most populous stars, red dwarfs, are the likely celestial bodies around which rocky exoplanets orbit. These diminutive stars are cool and hyperactive, especially during their youth, releasing torrents of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation potentially capable of obliterating any atmospheric existence on their attendant planets. This raises a crucial question in the field of astronomy: can a rocky planet survive or even regenerate an atmosphere in such a volatile environment?

In the quest to answer this question, astronomers recently turned to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, studying a rocky exoplanet named GJ 486 b. Despite its close proximity to its red dwarf host and its blistering surface temperature of around 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius), Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) has detected intriguing signs of water vapor. If this vapor is indeed linked to the planet, it could signal the presence of an atmosphere, a phenomenon that is yet to be definitively confirmed on a rocky exoplanet.

"We're almost certain that we're seeing water, but it's unclear whether it's a part of the planet's atmosphere or just a signature from the star," said Sarah Moran, the study's lead author and a researcher at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

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