Using data from multiple observations from the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes, a team of astronomers has solved the mystery as to why some “hot Jupiter” exoplanets appeared to have much less water than expected. The answer was in the clouds : the presence of clouds and mist have been responsible for hiding the water from our view.
Hot Jupiters are hot gaseous planets with characteristics similar to our Jupiter, and because they orbit very close to their stars, nearby starlight makes them difficult to study. Now, an international team of astronomers has carried out the largest spectroscopic catalog of exoplanet atmospheres, analyzing a total of 10 hot Jupiters of different sizes, masses and temperatures.
Combining observations from both telescopes and across an unprecedented range of wavelengths, scientists, extracting the signatures of various elements and molecules thanks to the fingerprint left by the atmosphere in starlight, discovered that the Planetary atmospheres are much more diverse than expected and that the fact that less water was detected than expected in some hot Jupiters was due to the presence of clouds on exoplanets that make it difficult to detect water.
“Our results have ruled out the dry scenario, and strongly suggest that the clouds simply hide the water from prying eyes, ” explains Jonathan Fortney of the University of California (USA) and co-author of the study.
The study, which has been published in the journal Nature , states that with the James Webb Space Telescope, the replacement for Hubble, a new stage of study of exoplanets and their atmospheres will begin that will expand our knowledge of the cosmos.
