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Scientists have observed swirling motions of clouds of sand in the atmosphere of a distant planet, having a 22-hour day and orbiting two stars over a 10,000-year period. The international team of researchers, including those from the University of Exeter, UK, made the discovery using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The researchers used the state-of-the-art telescope to study the motions of the clouds which were bringing hotter material up and pushing colder material down on the planetary mass companion VHS 1256 b, about 40 light-years away from Earth. Identifying for the first time the largest ever number of molecules at once on a planet outside our solar system, the team also discovered clear detections of water, methane and carbon monoxide with Webb's data, and found evidence of carbon dioxide. The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "This result speaks to the incredible combination of capabilities that is offered by JWST, and a huge amou
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a planet roughly the size of Neptune, evaporating at a rate 100 times faster than a previously identified exoplanet of similar size. The findings, published in the journal of Astronomy & Astrophysics, advance astronomers' knowledge about how planets evolve. The speed and distance at which planets orbit their respective blazing stars can determine each planet's fate -- whether the planet remains a longstanding part of its solar system or evaporates into the universe's dark graveyard. "This is the smoking gun that planets can lose a significant fraction of their entire mass," said David Sing, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in the US. "GJ 3470b is losing more of its mass than any other planet we seen so far; in only a few billion years from now, half of the planet may be gone," Sing said. Planets such as "super" Earths and "hot" Jupiters orbit more closely to their stars and are therefore hotter, causing the ...