Description: Transiting exoplanets from the Wide Angle Search for Planets
ESO have put out a press release reporting the discovery of barium in the atmospheres of ultra-hot Jupiters WASP-76b and WASP-121b, based on observations with the ESPRESSO spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Barium is the heaviest element so far detected in an exoplanet.
“The puzzling and counterintuitive part is: why is there such a heavy element in the upper layers of the atmosphere of these planets?” says Tomás Azevedo Silva, lead author of the paper .
The work has been reported by dozens of newspapers and media websites, such as CNN and The Independent .