Astronomers focused their observations on the exoplanet as it crossed in front of its star and starlight filtered through its atmosphere.Īfter 10 hours of observation time, the team discovered a signature suggesting the presence of quartz nanoparticles. Wasp-17b takes 3.7 Earth days to complete one orbit around its star. What the quartz crystals reveal about WASP-17b The finding could enable researchers to understand the materials used to form planetary environments much different from what we know on Earth. “But what we’re seeing instead are likely the building blocks of those, the tiny ‘seed’ particles needed to form the larger silicate grains we detect in cooler exoplanets and brown dwarfs.” “We fully expected to see magnesium silicates,” said study coauthor Hannah Wakeford, senior lecturer in astrophysics at University of Bristol, in a statement. But so far, the silicate grains detected in exoplanet atmospheres have been magnesium-based, not quartz, which is made of pure silica. Silicates are also incredibly common in the Milky Way galaxy. Minerals rich in silicon and oxygen, called silicates, are plentiful on Earth, the moon and other rocky bodies in the solar system. “We knew from Hubble observations that there must be aerosols - tiny particles making up clouds or haze - in WASP-17 b’s atmosphere, but we didn’t expect them to be made of quartz.” “We were thrilled,” said lead study author David Grant, a researcher at the University of Bristol, in a statement. The researchers detected the the quartz nanoparticles in high-altitude clouds using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, according to new research published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The hot gas giant has a thick, extended atmosphere, making it a "puffy" exoplanet. An artist's concept depicts what the exoplanet WASP-17b could look like.
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