Search Publications
A hot-Jupiter progenitor on a super-eccentric retrograde orbit
Schneider, Donald P.; Cochran, William D.; Mahadevan, Suvrath +57 more
Giant exoplanets orbiting close to their host stars are unlikely to have formed in their present configurations1. These `hot Jupiter' planets are instead thought to have migrated inward from beyond the ice line and several viable migration channels have been proposed, including eccentricity excitation through angular-momentum exchange w…
The cool brown dwarf Gliese 229 B is a close binary
Lutz, D.; Förster Schreiber, N. M.; Genzel, R. +76 more
Owing to their similarities with giant exoplanets, brown dwarf companions of stars provide insights into the fundamental processes of planet formation and evolution. From their orbits, several brown dwarf companions are found to be more massive than theoretical predictions given their luminosities and the ages of their host stars1–3. Ei…
Methane emission from a cool brown dwarf
Kiman, Rocio; Kirkpatrick, J. Davy; Gelino, Christopher R. +21 more
Beyond our Solar System, aurorae have been inferred from radio observations of isolated brown dwarfs1,2. Within our Solar System, giant planets have auroral emission with signatures across the electromagnetic spectrum including infrared emission of H3+ and methane. Isolated brown dwarfs with auroral signatures in t…
Two waves of massive stars running away from the young cluster R136
Sana, Hugues; Mahy, Laurent; Kaper, Lex +10 more
Massive stars are predominantly born in stellar associations or clusters1. Their radiation fields, stellar winds and supernovae strongly impact their local environment. In the first few million years of a cluster's life, massive stars are dynamically ejected and run away from the cluster at high speed2. However, the productio…
A population of red candidate massive galaxies 600 Myr after the Big Bang
Labbé, Ivo; van Dokkum, Pieter; Bezanson, Rachel +8 more
Galaxies with stellar masses as high as roughly 1011 solar masses have been identified1-3 out to redshifts z of roughly 6, around 1 billion years after the Big Bang. It has been difficult to find massive galaxies at even earlier times, as the Balmer break region, which is needed for accurate mass estimates, is redshifted to w…
Confirmation and refutation of very luminous galaxies in the early Universe
Papovich, Casey; Finkelstein, Steven L.; Buat, Véronique +34 more
During the first 500 million years of cosmic history, the first stars and galaxies formed, seeding the Universe with heavy elements and eventually reionizing the intergalactic medium1-3. Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have uncovered a surprisingly high abundance of candidates for early star-forming galaxies, wit…
Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRSpec PRISM
Zhang, X.; Heng, K.; May, E. M. +91 more
Transmission spectroscopy1-3 of exoplanets has revealed signatures of water vapour, aerosols and alkali metals in a few dozen exoplanet atmospheres4,5. However, these previous inferences with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes were hindered by the observations' relatively narrow wavelength range and spectral resolving po…
Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRSpec G395H
Carter, Aarynn L.; Gibson, Neale P.; Mikal-Evans, Thomas +89 more
Measuring the abundances of carbon and oxygen in exoplanet atmospheres is considered a crucial avenue for unlocking the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems1,2. Access to the chemical inventory of an exoplanet requires high-precision observations, often inferred from individual molecular detections with low-resolution space-b…
Identification of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere
Henning, Thomas; Fortney, Jonathan J.; Carter, Aarynn L. +129 more
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a key chemical species that is found in a wide range of planetary atmospheres. In the context of exoplanets, CO2 is an indicator of the metal enrichment (that is, elements heavier than helium, also called `metallicity')1-3, and thus the formation processes of the primary atmospheres of hot g…
Photochemically produced SO2 in the atmosphere of WASP-39b
Henning, Thomas; Fortney, Jonathan J.; Carter, Aarynn L. +82 more
Photochemistry is a fundamental process of planetary atmospheres that regulates the atmospheric composition and stability1. However, no unambiguous photochemical products have been detected in exoplanet atmospheres so far. Recent observations from the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Program2,3 found …