Yale university's technology enables astronomers to observe the atmosphere of distant planets more carefully, where the temperature is very high and the air contains evaporated metals. This planet named Mascara -2b is 0/40 away from the Earth/KLOC-parsec. It is a gas giant, just like Jupiter. However, the distance of its orbit from the star is 100 times that of Jupiter from the sun. The atmospheric temperature of mascara -2b exceeds 3 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which puts it at the extreme of a planet called hot Jupiter.

Astronomers are very interested in hot Jupiter, because it was not known until 25 years ago, and it may provide new information about the formation of planetary systems. Debra Fischer, an astronomer at Yale University, said: Hot Jupiter provides the best laboratory for developing analytical technologies, which will one day be used to search for biological characteristics of a potentially livable world. Fisher is Eugene Higgins professor of astronomy and co-author of a new study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Fisher is the leading force behind the instrument that made this discovery possible: Extreme Precision Spectrometer (Expres), which was built by Yale University and installed on the 4.3-meter-high Lowell Discovery Telescope near flug Staff, Arizona. The main task of ultra-precision spectrometer is to find planets similar to the earth according to the slight gravitational influence on stars, and this accuracy also comes in handy when looking for the atmospheric details of distant planets. This is how it works. When mascara -2b passes through the direct line of sight between its host star and the earth:

Elements in the planetary atmosphere will absorb starlight with a specific wavelength, that is, they will leave chemical fingerprints, which can be extracted by ultra-precision spectrometer. Using ultra-precision spectrometer, astronomers from Yale University and astronomers from Geneva Observatory, University of Bern and data transmission unit found gaseous iron, magnesium and chromium in the atmosphere of mascara -2b. Sam Cabot, a co-author of the study, a graduate student in astronomy at Yale University and the head of data analysis of the study, said: The atmospheric signal is very weak and difficult to detect.

Occasionally, Expres will provide this ability because it requires very high fidelity instruments to find planets outside our solar system. Jens Hojemex, an astronomer at the Geneva Observatory and the lead author of the study, said: The ultra-precision spectrometer also found evidence of different chemical compositions of mascara -2b in "morning" and "night". These chemical explorations can not only help us understand the elemental composition of the atmosphere, but also understand the efficiency of gas circulation model. Together with other advanced spectrometers, ultra-precision spectrometers are expected to collect a lot of new data.

These data may greatly advance the search for exoplanets, which orbit stars other than the sun. The detection of evaporated metal in mascara -2b atmosphere is one of the first exciting scientific achievements in the experiment, and more results will be announced soon.