Search Publications
A massive quiescent galaxy at redshift 4.658
Wild, Vivienne; Dunlop, James S.; Cullen, Fergus +10 more
The extremely rapid assembly of the earliest galaxies during the first billion years of cosmic history is a major challenge for our understanding of galaxy formation physics1-5. The advent of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has exacerbated this issue by confirming the existence of galaxies in substantial numbers as early as the fi…
Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRISS
Henning, Thomas; Fortney, Jonathan J.; Carter, Aarynn L. +86 more
The Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b has been the subject of extensive efforts to determine its atmospheric properties using transmission spectroscopy1-4. However, these efforts have been hampered by modelling degeneracies between composition and cloud properties that are caused by limited data quality5-9. Here we present the t…
Thermal emission from the Earth-sized exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b using JWST
Fortney, Jonathan J.; Bell, Taylor J.; Lagage, Pierre-Olivier +3 more
The TRAPPIST-1 system is remarkable for its seven planets that are similar in size, mass, density and stellar heating to the rocky planets Venus, Earth and Mars in the Solar System1. All the TRAPPIST-1 planets have been observed with transmission spectroscopy using the Hubble or Spitzer space telescopes, but no atmospheric features have…
Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRCam
Fortney, Jonathan J.; Carter, Aarynn L.; Gibson, Neale P. +96 more
Measuring the metallicity and carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratio in exoplanet atmospheres is a fundamental step towards constraining the dominant chemical processes at work and, if in equilibrium, revealing planet formation histories. Transmission spectroscopy (for example, refs. 1,2) provides the necessary means by constraining the abundance…
No thick carbon dioxide atmosphere on the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c
Kreidberg, Laura; Meadows, Victoria S.; Lincowski, Andrew P. +16 more
Seven rocky planets orbit the nearby dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, providing a unique opportunity to search for atmospheres on small planets outside the Solar System1. Thanks to the recent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), possible atmospheric constituents such as carbon dioxide (CO2) are now detectable2,3.…
Momentum transfer from the DART mission kinetic impact on asteroid Dimorphos
Zinzi, Angelo; Cheng, Andrew F.; Dall'Ora, Massimo +66 more
The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission performed a kinetic impact on asteroid Dimorphos, the satellite of the binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, at 23:14 UTC on 26 September 2022 as a planetary defence test1. DART was the first hypervelocity impact experiment on an asteroid at size and velocity scales relevant to planeta…
Orbital period change of Dimorphos due to the DART kinetic impact
Morrell, Nidia; Cheng, Andrew F.; Dominik, Martin +46 more
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully performed the first test of a kinetic impactor for asteroid deflection by impacting Dimorphos, the secondary of near-Earth binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, and changing the orbital period of Dimorphos. A change in orbital period of approximately 7 min was expected if the incident …
A broadband thermal emission spectrum of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-18b
Henning, Thomas; Fortney, Jonathan J.; Carter, Aarynn L. +73 more
Close-in giant exoplanets with temperatures greater than 2,000 K (`ultra-hot Jupiters') have been the subject of extensive efforts to determine their atmospheric properties using thermal emission measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Spitzer Space Telescope1-3. However, previous studies have yielded inconsistent results…
A reflective, metal-rich atmosphere for GJ 1214b from its JWST phase curve
McGill, Peter; Fu, Guangwei; Stevenson, Kevin B. +30 more
There are no planets intermediate in size between Earth and Neptune in our Solar System, yet these objects are found around a substantial fraction of other stars1. Population statistics show that close-in planets in this size range bifurcate into two classes on the basis of their radii2,3. It is proposed that the group with l…
Detection of stellar light from quasar host galaxies at redshifts above 6
Baba, Shunsuke; Treu, Tommaso; Fujimoto, Seiji +41 more
The detection of starlight from the host galaxies of quasars during the reionization epoch (z > 6) has been elusive, even with deep Hubble Space Telescope observations1,2. The current highest redshift quasar host detected3, at z = 4.5, required the magnifying effect of a foreground lensing galaxy. Low-luminosity quasars