- Today is a special paper day for me: for the first time we can do chemistry in a circumplanetary disk around a planetary-mass companion! Gabriele Cugno and I used JWST to tease out the signal of CT Cha b, finding a rich carbon chemistry (7 molecules + 1 isotopolog detected)! arxiv.org/abs/2509.15209Sep 19, 2025 15:22
- This C-rich chemistry is in stark contrast with the disk around the host star, CT Cha A, where we only find O-bearing molecules. CT Cha A fits in well with other Sun-like objects, while CT Cha b extends disk chemistry trends down to the planetary-mass regime.
- This started as preparation for Cycle 4 -- and made it possible for those proposals to succeed! Then it was just two people who were so excited to dig into the data and see where it led. I'm immensely proud of this work, grateful to have done this with Gabriele, and so excited for the data to come!✨
- What is the most complex organic molecule detected, so far in the sampling?
- We detect benzene (C6H6), which comes in the form of this fun ring!
