Pandora starts untangling exoplanet atmospheres from their stars
Pandora has completed commissioning and begun observing exoplanet host stars, using simultaneous visible and near-infrared measurements to separate stellar variability from atmospheric signals. A separate JWST analysis found winds or jets in 66 of 72 young disks, indicating that gas can be carried away while giant planets are still assembling their atmospheres.
Science··Midday
Pandora moves into science operations
NASA's Pandora, launched on 11 January, has completed commissioning with all instruments healthy and begun watching exoplanet host stars. Its 45-centimetre aluminium telescope will observe at least 20 exoplanets 10 times each, staying on target for 24 hours around every transit. Simultaneous visible and near-infrared measurements are designed to separate the marks left by starspots and bright faculae in transit spectra from signals of haze, clouds or water in a planet's atmosphere.[2]
Flows carry gas out of young disks
A team re-examining archival JWST mid-infrared spectra from 72 young protoplanetary disks detected extended emission in 66 of them. Cone-shaped molecular hydrogen winds appeared in 46 systems and fast neon jets in 40. The paper in The Astronomical Journal reports that both structures occur more often around disks still accreting rapidly; the winds and jets carry away gas that could otherwise feed the atmospheres of forming giant planets.[1]
Every jet comes with a wind
Every source with a neon jet also showed a wind, traced through molecular hydrogen in 85 per cent of them and through atomic oxygen in the rest. Detection rates did not vary with disk inclination or stellar mass, supporting the authors' interpretation that magnetically launched disk winds dominate during active accretion. The result does not measure how much gas reaches a planet itself; it identifies flows capable of removing gas from the planet-forming environment.[1]
