With help from the joint NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, two teams of scientists have made groundbreaking, first-of-their-kind discoveries on two exoplanets. One team utilized the immense power of Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instruments to observe and characterize clouds and molecules in the atmosphere of an exoplanet located 40 light-years away.
The second team of scientists also utilized MIRI to measure the temperature of a rocky exoplanet in the TRAPPIST-1 star system, located around 40 light-years away from Earth. The teams determined the temperature by measuring the infrared light emitted by the planet — the first time any light emitted by a rocky exoplanet has been detected and measured by a telescope.