Using the JWST, an international team featuring UNIGE scientists has detected enormous clouds of helium streaming away from the exoplanet WASP-107b.
An international collaboration that includes astronomers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS has detected enormous clouds of helium drifting away from the exoplanet WASP-107b.
The observations were collected with the James Webb Space Telescope and then analyzed using modeling tools created at UNIGE. The results, published in Nature Astronomy, offer important insights into how atmospheric escape works and how it affects the long-term development of exoplanets and some of their defining features.
Planetary atmospheres can sometimes leak into space.
Earth experiences this as well, losing a little more than 3 kg of material every second (mainly hydrogen), and this loss cannot be reversed. The process, known as “atmospheric escape,” is especially significant for worlds that orbit extremely close to their star, where intense heating makes the effect much stronger. Understanding this process is crucial because it can influence how these planets change over time.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers from the Observatory of the University of Geneva (UNIGE), along with colleagues from McGill, Chicago, and Montreal universities, were able to identify large flows of helium gas streaming away from WASP-107b, which lies more than 210 light-years from our solar system. This marks the first detection of this element on an exoplanet with JWST, making it possible to study the escape process with exceptional detail.
