The third identified interstellar comet in human history has a surprising chemical makeup, raising questions as to how common, or unusual, conditions in our own Solar System may be.
NIRSpec
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
JWST-TST High Contrast: First Direct Spectroscopy of GJ 504 b Reveals Clouds And Possible Metal Enrichment
Characterizing the coldest directly imaged companions through direct spectroscopy has only recently become possible with the James Webb Space Telescope.
Posted inAstrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Pluto, Status Report, Titan
An Unidentified Absorption Feature At 5.11 μm On The Surface Of Titan And Pluto From JWST Spectroscopy
Titan possesses a thick N2-CH4 atmosphere that makes it difficult to study its surface spectroscopically. The chemical composition of the solid surface of Titan thus remains very uncertain.
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Horizontal Transport As A Source Of Disequilibrium Chemistry On The Nightside Of A Hot Exoplanet
Hot Jupiters have temperature gradients of several hundreds of degrees between their permanent daysides and nightsides. Such a strong gradient creates winds with speeds of the order of kilometres per […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Cloudy With A Chance Of Metals: Indications Of CO2 In The Atmosphere Of GJ 1214 b From High-resolution K-band Spectroscopy
Sub-Neptune exoplanets frequently exhibit muted transmission spectra, with GJ 1214 b being the most prominent example. Following years of intense observing campaigns yielding featureless planetary spectra, recent observations with JWST […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Europa, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
The Fate Of Frozen Carbonated Water At Europa-like Conditions
We present the results of experiments probing the retention of CO2 in crystalline water ice, frozen sodium chloride (NaCl) brines, and flash-frozen carbonated water using diffuse reflectance infrared spectroscopy.
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Information Content Of JWST Transmission Spectroscopy Of The Exoplanet HAT-P-12b From The Optical To The Mid-infrared
Marginal posterior distributions of the chemical abundances for all included molecules, retrieved using different JWST instrument combinations. The shown distributions were derived from the samples via kernel density estimation (KDE; […]
Posted inAstrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Europa, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Status Report
Spectral Decomposition Reveals Surface Processes on Europa
Competing processes shape Europa’s surface: geological activity replenishes material through resurfacing, while bombardment by charged particles alters surface chemical composition. Each process leaves distinct spectral signatures.
![The best-fit PICASO retrieval temperature-pressure (TP) profile is plotted as a solid blue line with the temperature-pressure knots indicated in solid blue circles. The light blue shaded region indicates the 3σ confidence interval of the retrieved TP profiles. The tightly constrained TP profiles in the 1–10 bar range match with the peak of the 3–5 µmcontribution function plotted in the right panel. The retrieved TP profile based on MIRI-LRS 5–11.7 µmspectrum in Voyer et al. (2025) is plotted in solid purple along with the 3σ uncertainty plotted as light-purple shaded region. The condensation curves of H2O, Na2S, and KCl at solar metallicity are plotted with blue, orange, and green dashed lines respectively. For reference, the solid black line shows the TP profile of the best-fit Elf Owl grid model ([M/H] = -1, C/O = 1.5, log(g) = 3.23, log(Kzz) = 7, Teff= 350 K). Right panel: The contribution function map of the best-fit PICASO retrieval results shows that most of the 3–5 µmflux is emitted from 0.1–10 bar region. -- astro-ph.EP](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/JWST-Spectral-Retrieval.png?resize=1200%2C719&ssl=1)
Posted inAstrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release
JWST Spectral Retrieval Of Cold Directly Imaged Planet WD0806 b And The First
WD0806 b is a rare exoplanet companion orbiting a white dwarf, currently with a projected orbital distance of 2500 au. The Spitzer mid-IR photometry suggests that the temperature is as […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Possible Favored Great Oxidation Event Scenario On Exoplanets Around M-Stars With The Example Of TRAPPIST-1e
The Great Oxidation Event (GOE), which marked the transition from an anoxic to an oxygenated atmosphere, occurred 2.4 billion years ago on Earth, several hundreds of millions of years after […]