We have learned that planets and planetary systems are more diverse than we ever expected since the 1995 discovery of the first planet circling a star other than the sun.
We have the chance to research how planets behave in various circumstances because exoplanets are such faraway worlds.
This solves one of the important pieces of the puzzle is understanding the atmosphere.
The biggest telescope in orbit is NASA's James Webb space telescope (JWST) which was launched on Christmas Day 2021, and is the ideal instrument for exploring these realms.
Scientists utilized the telescope to reveal an exoplanet's chemical composition for the first time.
Even with the help of this large telescope, many exoplanets are too close to their parent stars to be distinguished.
A tiny portion of the starlight is blocked by the planet during transit, and an even smaller portion is filtered via the planet's atmosphere's outer layers.
Some of the light is absorbed by gases in the atmosphere, leaving a mark on the starlight in the form of a loss of brightness at particular colours or wavelengths.
Since JWST is an infrared telescope, it is especially well suited for studying exoplanet atmospheres, because instead of absorbing visible light, it absorbs infrared.
The WASP-39b chemical inventory has demonstrated how effective JWST is as a tool.