this march, i published my fifth first-author research paper in The Astronomical Journal (not my first fifth-author paper, which i think is yet to come). i was required by my collaborators to use a title prefix to indicate this paper is part of a series published by our team, so in a small act of resistance through obstinance, i strove to concoct the longest, most annoying title possible: “JWST-TST High Contrast: Living on the Wedge, or, NIRCam Bar Coronagraphy Reveals CO2 in the HR 8799 and 51 Eri Exoplanets’ Atmospheres.” the paper does what it says on the tin, though the tin can take some explaining.
We had a great press release thanks to folks at stsci and jhu that garnered some media attention, so you can read coverage of the work (and various explanatory quotes from myself and others) in a number of pieces linked below.
“Webb telescope directly observes exoplanet CO2 for first time,” by Daniel Lawler for AFP, available on phys.org.
“JWST reveals exoplanet composition with unprecedented clarity,” by Anna Demming for Chemistry World.
“First direct image of CO2 outside our solar system captured by Webb,” by Eric Ralls for earth.com.
“James Webb Space Telescope Captures Images of Individual Planets in Distant Star System,” by Frank Landymore for futurism.com.
one of my personal favorites was a piece for space.com written by Victoria Corless titled “Scientists used JWST instruments ‘wrong’ on purpose to capture direct images of exoplanets.” Victoria reached out to me and we had a nice email chat regarding the more technical aspects of the work, which was gratifying since a lot of the coverage (rightly) focused more on the scientific results (namely, the detection of CO2 in these planets’ atmospheres) and the visual spectacle of the images.
since so much ink has been spilt on this paper in other places, i’ll leave you to peruse the other articles instead of describing the paper in detail here on my blog. in the next year, there’s more misuse of JWST to come: i was approved 23h of additional telescope time to observe four more planetary systems in this way, to see how much CO2 other gas giant planets have in their atmospheres.
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