NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently found tiny quartz nanocrystals in the high-altitude clouds of scorching gas giant WASP-17 b, a hot Jupiter located 1,300 light-years from Earth. This marks the very first time that silica (SiO2) particles have been detected in an exoplanet atmosphere.
Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) observed the WASP-17 system for almost 10 hours, gathering over 1,275 brightness measurements of 5- to 12-micron mid-infrared light as the planet crossed its star. Researchers believe the nanocrystals resemble the pointy hexagonal prisms found in geodes on Earth, each one measuring just 10 nanometers across—one-millionth of one centimeter.
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We were thrilled! We knew from Hubble observations that there must be aerosols—tiny particles making up clouds or haze—in WASP-17 b’s atmosphere, but we didn’t expect them to be made of quartz,” said David Grant, a researcher at the University of Bristol in the UK.
