NASA scientists have found an interesting new topic to study about exoplanets, worlds beyond our solar system. Thanks to archival data from the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have concentrated on exoplanet clouds. While the clouds on some planets are abundant in ammonia and ammonium hydrosulfide, others have clouds composed of silicates, the family of minerals that form rocks that make up more than 90% of the Earth’s crust.
In the new study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, scientists have tried to observe the conditions under which these small dust clouds form sand.
Looking for clouds full of sand
During the first six years of Spitzer operations after its launch in 2003, scientists found evidence of silicate clouds present in the atmosphere of a handful of planets orbiting brown dwarf stars. Brown dwarfs are in the category of planets and stars and are not massive enough to initiate fusion, the process that makes stars shine.
In particular, evidence gathered by Spitzer about it was too weak and the presence of silicate will be confirmed by the James Webb Space Telescope which will be ready for operations this month.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), astronomers collected more than 100 of these marginal detections and grouped them by the temperature of the brown dwarf. “Understanding the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and planets where silicate clouds can form can also help us understand what we will see in the atmosphere of a planet that is closer to Earth in size and temperature,” Stanimir Metchev, professor of exoplanet studies at Western University. in London, Ontario, and co-author of the study said in an official statement.
As the clouds heat up the key ingredient until it becomes steam, silicate clouds form in extremely hot worlds. After grouping the brown dwarfs, the study experts found that they all ranged from about 1,000 ° C to 1,700 ° C, revealing ideal temperatures for the formation of silicate clouds.
“In warmer atmospheres than the upper end of the range identified in the study, silicates remain a vapor. Below the lower end, clouds will turn to rain or sink further down the atmosphere, where the temperature is higher, “JPL scientists said in a statement.
From the results of the study, scientists now believe that even Jupiter has silicate clouds in the depths of its atmosphere, a place where the temperature is much higher than the top.