Dramatic Atmosphere

Exoplanet TOI-561 b has air where none should persist

- -Elise Cutts

Artist's visualization of exoplanet TOI-561 b and its star

ASTRONOMERS HAVE FOUND an atmosphere where they least expected it: clinging to an exoplanet that's too small, too hot and too old to have air, at least in theory.

Observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of the blazinghot lava planet TOI-561 b suggest not only that it cultivates a thick atmosphere but also that it might have had one for billions of years. This evidence is the strongest yet on a hot, rocky world for air that isn't just a temporary veil of hydrogen and helium left over from planetary formation. The paper reporting the discovery, posted on the preprint server arXiv.org, will soon appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.