An exoplanet with a daytime temperature hot enough to vaporize iron has methane on its nightside because of an atmospheric circulation that should not be able to exist at that heat

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A team led by Thomas Evans-Soma of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg has published observations of the exoplanet WASP-121b that complicate the existing picture of how chemistry moves through an ultra-hot atmosphere. Using the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph to watch the planet through a complete orbit of its host star, the [...] The post An exoplanet with a daytime temperature hot enough to vaporize iron has methane on its nightside because of an atmospheric circulation that should not be able to exist at that heat appeared first on Space Daily .