The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered that winds exceeding 1,600 kilometers per hour are carrying tiny quartz crystals through the hot atmosphere of a giant gas planet far from our solar system called WASP-17b.
Quartz is a form of silicates, minerals rich in silica and oxygen, common in rocky bodies in the solar system.
Details of the new discovery
“We previously knew from Hubble Space Telescope work that there must be aerosols in the atmosphere of this distant planet, but we did not expect them to be composed of quartz,” said Daniel Grant, an astronomer at the University of California, and lead author of the study that led to the discovery.
It is noteworthy that aerosols are the small particles that form clouds or fog in the planetary atmosphere.
The planet “WASP-17b” is located 1,300 light-years from Earth, and it is very close to the star in the middle of the group in which it is located. So its temperature during the day rises to 1500 degrees Celsius.
Because it is so hot on this exoplanet, its diameter has expanded to about 285,000 kilometers which is nearly twice the diameter of Jupiter, even though WASP-17b’s mass is only about half Jupiter’s total mass.
Similar to Jupiter, WASP-17b appears to be composed mostly of hydrogen and helium.
In addition, scientists’ analysis of data from the telescope revealed the presence of carbon dioxide and water vapor on the planet, with signs of absorption of pure quartz crystals.
In combination with previous observations revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope, these crystals were judged to be shaped like pointed hexagonal prisms like quartz on Earth, but to be only 10 nanometers in size.
