{"id":213329,"date":"2025-05-06T05:13:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T10:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/webb-lifts-veil-on-common-but-mysterious-type-of-exoplanet"},"modified":"2025-05-06T05:13:54","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T10:13:54","slug":"webb-lifts-veil-on-common-but-mysterious-type-of-exoplanet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/webb-lifts-veil-on-common-but-mysterious-type-of-exoplanet","title":{"rendered":"Webb lifts veil on common but mysterious type of exoplanet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/webb-lifts-veil-on-common-but-mysterious-type-of-exoplanet2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Though they don\u2019t orbit around our sun, sub-Neptunes are the most common type of exoplanet, or planet outside our solar system, that have been observed in our galaxy. These small, gassy planets are shrouded in mystery\u2026and often, a lot of haze. Now, by observing exoplanet TOI-421 b, NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope is helping scientists understand sub-Neptunes in a way that was not possible prior to the telescope\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had been waiting my entire career for Webb so that we could meaningfully characterize the atmospheres of these smaller planets,\u201d said principal investigator Eliza Kempton of the University of Maryland, College Park. \u201cBy studying their atmospheres, we\u2019re getting a better understanding of how sub-Neptunes formed and evolved, and part of that is understanding why they don\u2019t exist in our solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The findings are <a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/2041-8213\/adcd76\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though they don\u2019t orbit around our sun, sub-Neptunes are the most common type of exoplanet, or planet outside our solar system, that have been observed in our galaxy. These small, gassy planets are shrouded in mystery\u2026and often, a lot of haze. Now, by observing exoplanet TOI-421 b, NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope is helping scientists [\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-213329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213329","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=213329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}