New Henrietta Spectrograph to Probe Alien Atmospheres
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Finding life beyond our solar system goes beyond measuring an exoplanet’s size, as rocky, Earth-sized worlds might not have the conditions for life as we know it. While exoplanets can be directly imaged by blocking their star’s glare, these images are fuzzy and lack resolution to provide enough details about the habitability. Therefore, astronomers are limited to studying an exoplanet’s atmosphere, and this has proven to be quite beneficial in teaching scientists about an exoplanet’s formation a
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New Henrietta Spectrograph to Probe Alien Atmospheres By Laurence Tognetti, MSc - March 29, 2026 10:27 PM UTC | Exoplanets Finding life beyond our solar system goes beyond measuring an exoplanet’s size, as rocky, Earth-sized worlds might not have the conditions for life as we know it. While exoplanets can be directly imaged by blocking their star’s glare, these images are fuzzy and lack resolution to provide enough details about the habitability. Therefore, astronomers are limited to studying an exoplanet’s atmosphere, and this has proven to be quite beneficial in teaching scientists about an exoplanet’s formation and evolution, and whether it contains the necessary ingredients for life as we know it. Now, researchers at the Carnegie Institute of Science are developing a new tool called the Henrietta Infrared Spectrograph with the goal of advancing exoplanet atmosphere science by providing greater detail than possibly ever before. While several ground-based telescopes are currently used to study exoplanet atmospheres, including the Very Large Telescope, Keck Observatory, and Gemini Observatory, just to name a few, those telescopes are designed to perform several types of science, including galaxy evolution and black holes. In contrast, Henrietta will be the first to specialize in exoplanet atmosphere research in near-infrared light, providing crucial details about exoplanets that go beyond physical attributes. “Mass and size only tell you so much,” said Dr. Jason Williams , who is a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Observatories and the scientific and technical lead of the Henrietta project. “If you measured Earth and Venus that way, you’d think they were almost the same planet. But we know their atmospheres—and their conditions—are completely different.” To study exoplanet atmospheres, Henrietta will take advantage of the transit method, which is a common method for identifying exoplanets and studying their atmospheres. The transit method occurs when an exoplanet pa...
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