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Professor Joshua Lothringer grew up looking at the stars on the plains of Colorado. Now, the Utah Valley University faculty member helped discover the presence of carbon dioxide on an exoplanet 700 lightyears from Earth.

Lothringer, 31, said he was going to study either music — specifically the guitar — or astronomy if he could plow through the math. He is now receiving kudos from NASA and other global partners on the project.

Lothringer used the James Webb Space Telescope to search the stars with an international planetary exploration team. The team also included three UVU undergraduate students helping with the research and data collection — something usually left to graduate and post-graduate students.

“With the CO2, we expected it but never have found it before this,” Lothringer said. “It was found on a planet the size of Jupiter and it’s pretty hot, about 2,000 degrees.”

Lothringer and other scientists focused the NASA telescope on a distant star and watched it dim by measuring its light over time. If a star periodically dims, it may mean there is an exoplanet orbiting the star, casting a shadow as it orbits between the star and the telescope. This exoplanet was named Hot Jupiter WASP-39b.

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WASP stands for “Wide Angle Search for Planets,” which represents a group of international academic organizations that search for planets using an array of telescopes. Scientists use numbers and letters with the WASP descriptions to keep track of the exoplanets.

The human eye can not see an exoplanet through a telescope alone because the star’s light is too bright. However, scientists can detect them by tracking the changes in the light spectrum coming from the exoplanet using infrared cameras, according to Lothringer.

Lothringer’s assignment with the global team was to determine if carbon dioxide was present on the planet.

Gases on an exoplanet absorb light in different combinations of colors, allowing researchers to determine the composition of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide absorbs a red infrared light that the natural eye can’t see.

Scientists record the infrared light using infrared cameras, based on the same principles as night vision goggles. Hot objects, including human bodies, give off heat in the form of infrared light. Lothringer used complex computer programs and algorithms to document the light spectrum.

Courtesy UVU Communications

“It took months to assemble and sort the data,” Lothringer said. “It is a painstaking process because the wavelengths of the light are measured between 3 and 5.5 microns, and the data has to be exact. However, when all was said and done, it was thrilling to know that we have this ability and that we are contributing to a science that will hopefully someday lead us to habitable planets.”

Lothringer said it is the smaller planets, like Earth, where they believe living conditions will be found. This research will most likely lead to finding smaller planets which are, right now, he said the smaller planets are harder to observe.

“The observations are just beginning to help data,” Lothringer said. “Within my lifetime I believe we’ll find a few planets that sustain life. There’s got to be life out there.”

Lothringer’s CO2 research has been published on NASA’s Early Release Science program website and in Nature, a weekly international journal that publishes peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology.

The Hot Jupiter WASP-39b project was an open collaboration, meaning Lothringer worked with more than 100 other scientists, who also found water vapor, sodium and potassium in the atmosphere. The total sum of the information is critical because, in space exploration, it builds a foundation that can be used to search smaller, terrestrial-sized planets for signs of life.

Lothringer gave kudos to his enthusiastic students, as well. “UVU is a unique place to do this with undergraduates. It’s a vibrant place for research. The undergrads are working so hard,” he said.

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