CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A super Jupiter has been spotted around a neighboring star by the Webb Space Telescope — and it has a super orbit. The planet is about the same diameter as Jupiter, but with six times the mass.
Its atmosphere is also rich in hydrogen like Jupiter's. One big difference: It takes this planet more than a century, possibly as long as 250 years, to go around its star. It's 15 times the distance from its star than Earth is to the sun.
Scientists long suspected a big planet circled this star 12 light-years away, but not this massive or far from its star. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
These new observations show the planet orbits the star Epsilon Indi A, part of a three-star system. This illustration depicts a cold gas giant orbiting a red dwarf. An international team led by Max Planck Institute for Astronomy's Elisabeth Matthews in Germany collected the images last year and published the findings Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Astronomers directly observed the incredibly old and cold gas giant — a rare and tricky feat — by masking the star through use of a special shading device on Webb. By blocking the starlight, the planet stood out as a pinpoint of infrared light. The planet and star clock in at 3.
5 billion years old, 1 billion years younger than our own solar system, but still considered old and brighter than expected, according to Matthews. NASA is sharing incredible new images from the James Webb Space Telescope. It's the most powerful telescope ever launched into space.
The star is so close and bright to our own solar system that it's visible with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere. Don't bet on life, though. "This is a gas giant with no hard surface or liquid water oceans," Matthews said in an email.
The Pillars of Creation are one of the most iconic and beautiful sights in deep space - now NASA has released a 3D visualisation allowing us to see inside this stunning part of the Eagle Nebula. It's unlikely this solar system sports more gas giants, she said, but small rocky worlds could lurk there. Worlds similar to Jupiter can help scientists understand "how these planets evolve over giga-year timescales," she said.
The first planets outside our solar system — dubbed exoplanets — were confirmed in the early 1990s. NASA's tally now stands at 5,690 as of mid-July. The vast majority were detected via the transit method, in which a fleeting dip in starlight, repeated at regular intervals, indicates an orbiting planet.
Telescopes in space and also on the ground are on the hunt for even more, especially planets that might be similar to Earth. Launched in 2021, NASA and the European Space Agency's Webb telescope is the biggest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever placed in space. This image provided by NASA on Monday, July 11, 2022, shows galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The telescope is designed to peer back so far that scientists can get a glimpse of the dawn of the universe about 13.7 billion years ago and zoom in on closer cosmic objects, even our own solar system, with sharper focus. This combo of images provided by NASA on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, shows a side-by-side comparison of observations of the Southern Ring Nebula in near-infrared light, at left, and mid-infrared light, at right, from the Webb Telescope.
This image released by NASA on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, shows the bright star at the center of NGC 3132 for the first time in near-infrared light. This image provided by NASA on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, shows Stephan's Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, as observed from the Webb Telescope. This mosaic was constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files, according to NASA.
This image provided by NASA on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, shows Stephan's Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies captured by the Webb Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). This image released by NASA on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, shows the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured areas of star birth, according to NASA.
This image released by NASA on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, combined the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope's two cameras to create a never-before-seen view of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), this combined image reveals previously invisible areas of star birth. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!.
