NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has proven just how powerful it is with its latest discovery: sand storms swirling on a planet 40 light-years from Earth, or about 235 trillion miles away.
One of Webb’s greatest powers is its ability to decipher what’s going on in alien atmospheres. From its vantage point in space, Webb can peer at a distant world and analyze the entire infrared spectrum of starlight passing through the planet’s atmosphere.
Different spectra of light correspond to different elements, so Webb can show astronomers exactly which gases and vapors are in another world’s atmosphere.
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