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#superearths — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #superearths, aggregated by home.social.

  1. #Ariel, the M-class #ESA mission (launch 2028), hopes to study a range of exoplanet atmospheres in transmission. What we've learned from #JWST, though, is that most small planets have "flat" spectra. #Neptunes because their atmospheres are dominated by "heavy" volatiles. Earths & #superEarths because they've lost theirs altogether. So if JWST, with a 6.5m mirror, can't see a spectrum, what hope is there for Ariel with only a 1m mirror? My guess is it will become a hot jupiter survey mission.