FLORIDA – James Webb Space Telescope planning to explore a new world of planet strange rocky in more detail. The two planets observed, known as the extremely hot and lava-covered 55 Cancri e, and LHS 3844 b, have no substantial atmosphere.
Rocky planets are more difficult to observe than giant planets in the form of gas clusters in current telescope technology. Because, it has a smaller size and relatively lower brightness than other stars next to it.
Planet 55 Cancri e orbits its parent star at a distance of 2.4 million km (1.5 million miles) or about 4% of the relative distance between Mercury and the sun. Planet 55 Cancri e orbits its star every 18 hours and has a surface temperature high above the melting point of most rock types.
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But the powerful mirrors of the James Webb Telescope and its location in outer space should allow it to observe two planets slightly larger than Earth, known as super-Earths. This task will be a major undertaking for NASA’s new observatory, which will complete its commissioning phase in a few weeks.
“The telescope scientific consortium (James Webb) has an ambitious agenda to study the geology of these small planets from 50 light years away,” said scientist James Webb, quoted by SINDOnews from the Space.com page, Tuesday (31/5/2022).
None of the planets in the universe is habitable like Earth, but observations on these two planets can provide evidence for an in-depth study of whether conditions are Earth-like. Two teams will test this hypothesis, one team led by research scientist Renyu Hu of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will examine the planet’s thermal emissions for atmospheric signatures.
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A second team led by Alexis Brandeker, a professor from Stockholm University, will measure heat from the bright side of planet 55 Cancri e. “These two investigations will give us fantastically new perspectives on Earth-like planets in general, helping us learn what the early Earth was like when it was hot as these planets are today,” Kreidberg said.
