Measurements of light captured from the dayside of the #exoplanet TOI-561 b with #JWST suggest that in spite of the intense radiation it receives from its #star, the #planet is not a bare rock.
TOI-561 b is the innermost of four #planets orbiting a 10-billion-year-old G-type star located roughly 280 light-years from Earth.
Classified as an ultra-short period planet, TOI-561 b orbits just 0.01 AU from its star completing one orbit in less than 11 hours.
Although the star is somewhat smaller and cooler than the Sun, the planet orbits so close that its dayside surface temperature must far exceed the melting temperature of typical rock.
A thick #atmosphere rich in volatiles like #water, #oxygen, and carbon dioxide would distribute heat around the planet, causing the nightside as well as the dayside to be molten.
Now, astronomers have detected the strongest evidence yet for such an atmosphere.
Observations suggest that the exoplanet is surrounded by a thick blanket of gases above a global magma ocean.
The results help explain the planet’s unusually low density and challenge the prevailing wisdom that relatively small planets so close to their stars are not able to sustain atmospheres.
#astronomy #exoplanets
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-detects-thick-atmosphere-around-broiling-lava-world/
Paper by Teske et al. (2025):
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae0a4c
