{"id":208545,"date":"2025-03-13T04:28:35","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T09:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/water-and-carbon-dioxide-detected-in-the-atmosphere-of-a-hot-super-neptune-exoplanet"},"modified":"2025-03-13T04:28:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T09:28:35","slug":"water-and-carbon-dioxide-detected-in-the-atmosphere-of-a-hot-super-neptune-exoplanet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/water-and-carbon-dioxide-detected-in-the-atmosphere-of-a-hot-super-neptune-exoplanet","title":{"rendered":"Water and carbon dioxide detected in the atmosphere of a hot super-Neptune exoplanet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/water-and-carbon-dioxide-detected-in-the-atmosphere-of-a-hot-super-neptune-exoplanet4.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have characterized the atmosphere of a hot super-Neptune exoplanet designated WASP-166 b. As a result, they found that the atmosphere of this alien world contains water and carbon dioxide. Their findings were <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2501.00609\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> Dec. 31 on the <i>arXiv<\/i> preprint server.<\/p>\n<p>WASP-166 b is about seven times larger and 32 times more massive than the Earth. It orbits its <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/host+star\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">host star<\/a> every 5.44 days, at a distance of approximately 0.067 AU from it. The planet is relatively hot as its equilibrium temperature is estimated to be 1,270 K. The parameters of WASP-166 make it a representative of the so-called hot Neptune desert\u2014a region of parameter space at high insolation fluxes and intermediate planet radii that is very sparsely populated.<\/p>\n<p>The parent star WASP-166, which is located some 368 light years away, has a spectral type of F9V, and is about 20% larger and more massive than the sun. The star has an effective temperature of 6,050 K, metallicity at a level of 0.19 dex, and its age is estimated to be 2.1 billion years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have characterized the atmosphere of a hot super-Neptune exoplanet designated WASP-166 b. As a result, they found that the atmosphere of this alien world contains water and carbon dioxide. Their findings were reported Dec. 31 on the arXiv preprint server. WASP-166 b is about seven times larger [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}