Webb telescope spots quartz crystals 1,300 light-years away from Earth

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“We were thrilled!” said David Grant, a researcher at the University of Bristol in the U.K. and first author. “We knew from Hubble observations that there must be aerosols – tiny particles making up clouds or haze – in WASP-17 b’s atmosphere, but we didn’t expect them to be made of quartz,” added Grant.Quartz, a type of silicate, is part of a group of minerals rich in silicon and oxygen.

“We fully expected to see magnesium silicates. But what we’re seeing instead are likely the building blocks of those, the tiny ‘seed’ particles needed to form the larger silicate grains we detect in cooler exoplanets and brown dwarfs,” said Hannah Wakeford, co-author from the University of Bristol. The data revealed that quartz crystals originate in the atmosphere of this exoplanet itself rather than being swept up from a rocky surface.

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