“We were thrilled! We knew from Hubble observations that there must be aerosols – tiny particles making up clouds or haze – in WASP-17b’s atmosphere, but we didn’t expect them to be made of quartz,” mentioned University of Bristol researcher David Grant, who authored a paper on the invention printed yesterday within the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Silicates are minerals wealthy in silicon and oxygen and so they make up a bulk of Earth and the Moon’s mass, in addition to different rocky objects within the photo voltaic system. They are extraordinarily frequent throughout the galaxy. But the silicate grains that have been detected up to now within the atmospheres of exoplanets and brown dwarfs gave the impression to be made from magnesium-rich silicates like olivine and pyroxene. Quartz is pure silicon dioxide.

The outcomes from this examine “puts a new spin” in astronomers’ understanding of how exoplanet clouds type and evolve. According to coauthor Hannah Wakeford, additionally from the University of Bristol, they have been anticipating to see magnesium silicates however as a substitute, the quartz particles seem like the constructing blocks of “seed particles” required to construct silicate grains which might be normally detected in cooler exoplanets and brown dwarfs.