UAE researcher helps to unravel secrets of vast planet 700 light years away

UAE researcher helps to unravel secrets of vast planet 700 light years away

An Abu Dhabi researcher has told of her excitement after helping to shed new light on a distant planet that has striking parallels to Earth, despite dwarfing it in size.

A team of astrophysicists, including Dr Jasmina Blecic, from New York University Abu Dhabi, has revealed in much greater detail what is found in the atmosphere of Wasp-39b.

This massive furnace-like ball of gas — which is 700 light years away — has a diameter about 10 times that of Earth and a temperature estimated to be about 900°C, the result of it being an eighth as far from its star as the planet Mercury is to the Sun.

In newly published research, Dr Blecic and her fellow researchers from around the world revealed that the atmosphere of Wasp-39b — an exoplanet, meaning that it orbits a star outside our solar system — contains sulphur dioxide.

As this gas has been produced by light acting on chemicals in the upper part of the atmosphere of Wasp-39b, the finding means that scientists have detected photochemistry for the first time on an exoplanet.

Planet has own version of ozone layer

Similar to the ozone layer that surrounds Earth, the sulphur dioxide protects the deeper parts of Wasp-39b’s atmosphere