The Webb Space Telescope has discovered a super Jupiter around a neighboring star. And it has a super orbit.
This planet is about the same diameter as Jupiter, but six times more massive. Its atmosphere is also rich in hydrogen, like Jupiter’s.
There is one big difference. It would take the planet more than a century, or even 250 years, to orbit the star. It is 15 times further away than the star is from Earth.
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Scientists have long suspected that a large planet may be orbiting the star, which is 12 light-years away, but it’s unlikely that the planet will be this huge, and it’s far away from the star. do not. One light year is 5.8 trillion miles. These new observations indicate that the planet orbits the star Epsilon Indi A, which is part of the Three Star System.
An international team led by Elisabeth Matthews of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astronomy collected the images last year and published their findings in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
Astronomers directly observed the incredibly old and cold gas giant by masking the star using a special shading device on the web. This is a rare and tricky feat. By blocking the starlight, the planet emerged as a pinpoint of infrared light.
This illustration provided by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy depicts a cold gas giant orbiting a red dwarf star. Scientists have long suspected that a large planet orbits the star Epsilon Indi A, but it’s not this large or far from the star. (via T. Muller (MPIA/HdA) AP)
Matthews said the planet and star are 3.5 billion years old, a billion years younger than our solar system, but are still thought to be older and brighter than expected.
This star is so close to our solar system and so bright that it can be seen with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere.
However, don’t bet on your life.
“This is a gas giant planet with no hard surfaces or oceans of liquid water,” Matthews said in an email.
He said it was unlikely that there were any more gas giants in our solar system, but that small rocky worlds could be lurking there.
Jupiter-like worlds could help scientists understand “how these planets evolve on gigayear timescales,” she said.
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The first planets outside our solar system (called exoplanets) were identified in the early 1990s. NASA’s tally stands at 5,690 as of mid-July. The majority are detected by the transit method, where the brief dips in starlight that repeat at regular intervals indicate the planet’s orbit.
Space and ground-based telescopes are searching for more planets, especially those that may be similar to Earth.
NASA and the European Space Agency’s Webb Telescope will launch in 2021 and will be the largest and most powerful observatory ever placed in space.