WASP-39b is now the best-explored planet outside the solar system.
The sheer intensity of starlight that batters WASP-39b makes the planet an ideal laboratory for studying such photochemical reactions, scientists said in the statement.
The level of detail provided by JWST allowed astronomers to peek into WASP-39b's past and learn how this hot and scorching world came into being. From the ratios of carbon to oxygen, of potassium to oxygen, and of sulfur to hydrogen in the planet's atmosphere, the researchers inferred that the gas giant planet must have formed from collisions of several smaller planetesimals.
"Data like these are a game changer," Natalia Batalha, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz who coordinated the observing program, said in the statement.
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