NASA’s Webb reveals the wild weather of a mysterious world 20 light-years away
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed that a turbulent world 20 light-years away has a surprisingly orderly weather system, with three recurring atmospheric states driven by temperature changes and shifting clouds.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed that a turbulent world 20 light-years away has a surprisingly orderly weather system, with three recurring atmospheric states driven by temperature changes and shifting clouds.
The short version
- The breakthrough gives scientists a powerful new tool for uncovering weather patterns on distant worlds and understanding the conditions that shape their atmospheres.
- Scientists have discovered a powerful new way to decode the weather on distant worlds, revealing surprisingly organized patterns hidden within the turbulent atmosphere of a mysterious object 20 light-years from Earth.
- Researchers at Trinity College Dublin used observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to investigate SIMP 0136, a brown dwarf previously associated with phenomena resembling the northern lights.
What happened
They found that its complex weather is largely governed by just two factors: changes in temperature and the vertical structure of its clouds. The discovery offers a new way to understand the atmospheric conditions of distant worlds and could help astronomers investigate planets far beyond our Solar System.
Why it matters
To investigate SIMP 0136, the researchers analyzed observations collected by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) using a mathematical technique called Principal Component Analysis (PCA).
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