NASA has captured a whole new type of planet

James Webb, the world’s most powerful space telescope Developed and operated by NASA, helped humanity discover a new type of planet called “super Venus”.

The representative of this interesting type of planet is GJ1214b, a world once mistakenly considered a super-Earth.

Theo Daily SciTech, GJ1214b orbits its parent star GJ1214, located 48 light years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus.

Previously, this planet was discovered by previous telescopes, but scientists wrongly thought it was a super-Earth.

Surprisingly, new data from James Webb shows that the nature of this planet does not resemble a super Earth.

An international study led by astronomers Everett Schlawin from the University of Arizona (USA) and Kazumasa Ohno from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan showed that the concentration of carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide – CO₂) extremely high in the planet’s atmosphere.

This is the equivalent of the proportion of this gas in Venus. Carbon dioxide makes up 96.5% of Venus’ atmosphere, while its proportion on Earth is only 0.04%.

This was revealed by the subtle carbon dioxide signal that James Webb sought to capture, which was later confirmed by scientists using atmospheric models.

Called “super Venus” because this planet is much larger than Venus. NASA estimates that it is six times more massive than our Earth.

According to scientists, this is a completely new type of planet, unlike anything in our solar system and known exoplanets.

“This discovery provides new information on the formation of planets and planetary systems” – concludes the study published in the scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.