Planetologists have found that the atmosphere of the strange “diamond planet&rdquo ; 55 Cnc in the constellation Cancer is not composed of vaporized rocks, as astronomers believed in the past, but of gases that are constantly being released from the lava covering the planet's surface. The results of the scientists' measurements were published in the scientific journal Nature, TASS reported.
„The measurements we made using the instruments of the James Webb telescope rule out the possibility that the atmosphere of this planet consists of vaporized rocks and speak of the presence of a full-fledged gas mantle consisting mainly of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide . It is assumed that it arose as a result of lava degassing”, the researchers wrote.
This conclusion was reached by a group of American, European and Japanese planetary scientists led by Hu Renyu, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, when analyzing data and images obtained by the James Webb orbiting telescope after observing on the "diamond planet" 55 Cnc e in November 2022 and March 2023
In both time periods, planetary scientists explain, this distant exoplanet disappears behind the disk of the star it orbits. This enables scientists to separate the radiation produced by its atmosphere from the glow of the star itself and to determine as accurately as possible the chemical composition of the air of the “diamond planet”, for which scientists studied the spectrum structure of its atmosphere.
It turned out that the atmosphere of the “diamond planet” is a relatively dense layer of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide, not a dilute mixture of hydrogen, helium and poisonous hydrocyanic acid, as indicated by previous attempts to study its atmosphere using the Spitzer orbiter. In addition to this, scientists have found that the "solar" side of 55 Cnc is less hot than planetary scientists previously thought - it's heated to 1,500, not 2,200 degrees Celsius.
According to the researchers, similar results of the measurements rule out the possibility that the atmosphere of the “diamond planet” to have arisen as a result of the evaporation of part of its rocks. Instead, scientists believe that the atmosphere of 55 Cnc is constantly replenished with carbon dioxide and other volatiles that are released from the lava on the surface of this world. This explains why the atmosphere of the "diamond planet" not yet destroyed by the solar wind and Copernican radiation, planetary scientists concluded.
The diamond exoplanet 55 Cnc e is one of the five satellites of the star Copernicus in the constellation Cancer. This star system is only 41 light years away, making it possible to study its planets using existing telescopes. The images they obtained show that the planet closest to the star, 55 Cnc, is a large “super-Earth”, whose depths contain large reserves of diamonds or similar forms of carbon heated to very high temperatures.