NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected signs of water, along with evidence for clouds and haze, in the of a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star over a thousand Light years away, the U.S. space agency said on July 13.
The observation is the most detailed of its kind to date, demonstrating Webb’s unprecedented ability to analyse distant atmospheres, according to NASA. WASP-96 b is one of more than 5,000 confirmed exoplanets in the Milky Way.
Located roughly 1,150 light-years away in the southern-sky constellation Phoenix, it represents a type of gas giant that has no direct analogue in our Solar System, it said in a statement.
The transmission spectrum revealed the previously hidden details of the atmosphere: the unambiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence of clouds that were thought not to exist based on prior observations.