{"id":454447,"date":"2025-12-18T00:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T00:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/454447\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T00:49:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T00:49:13","slug":"astronomers-find-mysterious-lemon-shaped-exoplanet-with-nasas-webb-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/454447\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers find mysterious lemon-shaped exoplanet with NASA&#8217;s Webb telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">Space is full of unsolved mysteries, and a team using NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope have recently turned up a doozy. &#8220;I remember after we got the data down, our collective reaction was &#8216;What the heck is this?&#8217; It&#8217;s extremely different from what we expected,&#8221; <a class=\"link \" href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/missions\/webb\/nasas-webb-observes-exoplanet-whose-composition-defies-explanation\/\" data-i13n=\"cpos:1;pos:1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:said;cpos:1;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\">said<\/a> Peter Gao of the Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington, a co-author on the study.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">The researchers found an exoplanet dubbed PSR J2322-2650b that orbits a small, dense star emitting electromagnetic radiation known as a pulsar. They are an example of a black widow system, where a rapidly spinning pulsar is paired with a smaller astronomical body. A black widow duo isn\u2019t unusual, but this pair has sparked questions about how the exoplanet originally formed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">The exoplanet&#8217;s proximity to the pulsar and its intense gravitational pull have distorted it into an oblong lemon shape. More unusually, PSR J2322-2650b also has a unique atmosphere comprised mostly of helium and carbon. &#8220;Instead of finding the normal molecules we expect to see on an exoplanet \u2014 like water, methane, and carbon dioxide \u2014 we saw molecular carbon,&#8221; principal investigator Michael Zhang of University of Chicago said.\u00a0Given its strange atmosphere, the team isn&#8217;t certain how the exoplanet formed. &#8220;It&#8217;s very hard to imagine how you get this extremely carbon-enriched composition. It seems to rule out every known formation mechanism,&#8221; Zhang said. For now, we\u2019ll chalk this up as another mystery of the universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Space is full of unsolved mysteries, and a team using NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope have recently turned&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":454448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[14826,17301,208300,159,783,67,132,20923,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-454447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-exoplanet","9":"tag-james-webb-space-telescope","10":"tag-michael-zhang","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unsolved-mysteries","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115737825483818704","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}