The Supertelescope captures a dust storm outside our solar system for the first time

But the storm Webb discovered isn’t exactly the same phenomenon you’d find in a barren desert region of our planet. It’s more of a rock mist.

“It’s like taking grains of sand, but much better. We’re talking silicate grains the size of smoke particles,” explains Beth Biller, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, UK.

The expert estimates that “this is how the clouds in VHS 1256b will become much hotter. This planet is a hot, young body. The temperature at the top of the cloud is probably similar to that of a candle flame.”

VHS 1256b was first identified by the Vista telescope, which was developed in the United Kingdom and has been operating in Chile since 2015.

This planet is the so-called “super Jupiter” – similar to the gas giant in our solar system, but much larger, perhaps 12 to 18 times the mass of the “original” Jupiter.

It orbits some stars at a great distance – about four times the distance of Pluto from the Sun.

Previous observations of VHS 1256b showed it to have a reddish appearance, indicating that it may have dust in its atmosphere. A study based on web analytics fully confirms this.

“This is cool, because it shows how clouds on another planet can differ from the clouds of water vapor we know on Earth,” says Beller.

“We see carbon monoxide and methane in the atmosphere, which indicates that the cloud [do VHS 1256b] It’s hot and turbulent, with substance drawn from the depths.”

And the researcher adds: “It is possible that there are several layers of silicate grains. The ones that we see are composed of very fine grains, and they are higher in the atmosphere. But there may be larger grains in the lower layers.”

Other telescopes have already detected silicates in so-called brown dwarfs. These things are basically like stars that fail to ignite properly.

But this is the first time this phenomenon has been seen in a planet-sized object.

To perform detection, use the Web mid-infrared (Miri) and near-infrared spectrometer (NirSpec) instruments.

They haven’t taken pretty pictures of the planet — at least not in this case. What the devices did was separate the light coming from the VHS 1256b into its component colors, as a way to characterize the composition of the atmosphere.

“JWST is the only telescope that can measure all of these molecular and dust properties together,” says Professor Gillian Wright, one of the researchers involved in the project and director of STFC UK’s Center for Technology in Astronomy, also in Edinburgh.

“The dynamic image of the atmosphere of VHS 1256b provided by this study is an excellent example of the detections that could be achieved using the advanced features of Miri and NirSpec together,” the specialist continues.

JWST’s main mission is to observe the pioneer stars and galaxies that first shone brightly just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

But the other purpose of the telescope is to examine exoplanets. At Miri and NirSpec, he has the tools to study these objects’ atmospheres in unprecedented detail.

With this technology, some scientists hope to be able to determine whether certain exoplanets have conditions suitable for hosting life.

James Webb is a collaborative project of space agencies in the United States, Europe and Canada. It was launched in December 2021 and is considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.