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By European Space Agency
An international team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have directly imaged an exoplanet roughly 12 light-years from Earth. While there were hints that the planet existed, it had not been confirmed until Webb imaged it. The planet is one of the coldest exoplanets observed to date.
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By NASA
6 Min Read NASA’s Webb Images Cold Exoplanet 12 Light-Years Away
This image of the gas-giant exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab was taken with the coronagraph on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). A star symbol marks the location of the host star Epsilon Indi A, whose light has been blocked by the coronagraph, resulting in the dark circle marked with a dashed white line (full image below) An international team of astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has directly imaged an exoplanet roughly 12 light-years from Earth. The planet, Epsilon Indi Ab, is one of the coldest exoplanets observed to date.
The planet is several times the mass of Jupiter and orbits the K-type star Epsilon Indi A (Eps Ind A), which is around the age of our Sun, but slightly cooler. The team observed Epsilon Indi Ab using the coronagraph on Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). Only a few tens of exoplanets have been directly imaged previously by space- and ground-based observatories.
Image A: Exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab
This image of the gas-giant exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab was taken with the coronagraph on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). A star symbol marks the location of the host star Epsilon Indi A, whose light has been blocked by the coronagraph, resulting in the dark circle marked with a dashed white line. Epsilon Indi Ab is one of the coldest exoplanets ever directly imaged. Light at 10.6 microns was assigned the color blue, while light at 15.5 microns was assigned the color orange. MIRI did not resolve the planet, which is a point source. “Our prior observations of this system have been more indirect measurements of the star, which actually allowed us to see ahead of time that there was likely a giant planet in this system tugging on the star,” said team member Caroline Morley of the University of Texas at Austin. “That’s why our team chose this system to observe first with Webb.”
“This discovery is exciting because the planet is quite similar to Jupiter — it is a little warmer and is more massive, but is more similar to Jupiter than any other planet that has been imaged so far,” added lead author Elisabeth Matthews of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.
Previously imaged exoplanets tend to be the youngest, hottest exoplanets that are still radiating much of the energy from when they first formed. As planets cool and contract over their lifetime, they become significantly fainter and therefore harder to image.
A Solar System Analog
“Cold planets are very faint, and most of their emission is in the mid-infrared,” explained Matthews. “Webb is ideally suited to conduct mid-infrared imaging, which is extremely hard to do from the ground. We also needed good spatial resolution to separate the planet and the star in our images, and the large Webb mirror is extremely helpful in this aspect.”
Epsilon Indi Ab is one of the coldest exoplanets to be directly detected, with an estimated temperature of 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) — colder than any other imaged planet beyond our solar system, and colder than all but one free-floating brown dwarf. The planet is only around 180 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius) warmer than gas giants in our solar system. This provides a rare opportunity for astronomers to study the atmospheric composition of true solar system analogs.
“Astronomers have been imagining planets in this system for decades; fictional planets orbiting Epsilon Indi have been the sites of Star Trek episodes, novels, and video games like Halo,” added Morley. “It’s exciting to actually see a planet there ourselves, and begin to measure its properties.”
Not Quite As Predicted
Epsilon Indi Ab is the twelfth closest exoplanet to Earth known to date and the closest planet more massive than Jupiter. The science team chose to study Eps Ind A because the system showed hints of a possible planetary body using a technique called radial velocity, which measures the back-and-forth wobbles of the host star along our line of sight.
“While we expected to image a planet in this system, because there were radial velocity indications of its presence, the planet we found isn’t what we had predicted,” shared Matthews. “It’s about twice as massive, a little farther from its star, and has a different orbit than we expected. The cause of this discrepancy remains an open question. The atmosphere of the planet also appears to be a little different than the model predictions. So far we only have a few photometric measurements of the atmosphere, meaning that it is hard to draw conclusions, but the planet is fainter than expected at shorter wavelengths.”
The team believes this may mean there is significant methane, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere that are absorbing the shorter wavelengths of light. It might also suggest a very cloudy atmosphere.
The direct imaging of exoplanets is particularly valuable for characterization. Scientists can directly collect light from the observed planet and compare its brightness at different wavelengths. So far, the science team has only detected Epsilon Indi Ab at a few wavelengths, but they hope to revisit the planet with Webb to conduct both photometric and spectroscopic observations in the future. They also hope to detect other similar planets with Webb to find possible trends about their atmospheres and how these objects form.
NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will use a coronagraph to demonstrate direct imaging technology by photographing Jupiter-like worlds orbiting Sun-like stars – something that has never been done before. These results will pave the way for future missions to study worlds that are even more Earth-like.
These results were taken with Webb’s Cycle 1 General Observer program 2243 and have been published in the journal Nature.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu , Hannah Braun hbraun@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Related Information
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Last Updated Jul 23, 2024 EditorStephen SabiaContactLaura Betzlaura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Image: XMM-Newton and Euclid image of galaxy cluster Abell 2390 View the full article
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By European Space Agency
The hyperactive sunspot region responsible for the beautiful auroras earlier in May was still alive and kicking when it rotated away from Earth’s view. Watching from the other side of the Sun, the ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission detected this same region producing the largest solar flare of this solar cycle. By observing the Sun from all sides, ESA missions reveal how active sunspot regions evolve and persist, which will help improve space weather forecasting.
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Science Instruments Science Highlights News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Mars Resources Mars Exploration All Planets Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets 3 min read
Sols 4205-4206: Curiosity Would Like One of Each, Please!
This image was taken by Right Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4202 (2024-06-01 19:34:11 UTC). NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, June 3, 2024
You know that feeling at the ice cream shop when you’re presented with so many tantalizing options and you have to narrow it down to just a few to taste test, and then you have to strategize how to fit all the best flavors in your bowl? That’s what the past few planning shifts have felt like on Mars. There are just too many cool rocks to choose from!
Curiosity is currently investigating “Whitebark Pass” (which sounds like it should be an ice cream flavor, right?) with a variety of rock textures and colors in our workspace. We spent the weekend at this location, investigating some of the light-toned, pitted clasts and the gray crumbly material that lines the slab. Then there’s the slab itself, and some bright white clasts that we crushed with the rover wheel which caught our eye. The Navcam image above shows the rover arm going in for a close inspection of the slab.
Today’s 2-sol plan includes another helping of contact science and a lot of targeted remote sensing. Essentially the team asked to try a scoop of the tan stuff, some gray stuff on the side, and add in the crumbly white bits while you’re at it. This translated to the team planning DRT, MAHLI, and APXS on “Gem Lakes” to investigate the top of this slab, MAHLI and APXS hovering over “Convict Lake” to assess a white rock that was crushed by the rover wheel, and a MAHLI dogs eye mosaic on “Starr Minaret” to get a detailed view of the textures in the gray material. Then we sprinkled in a number of ChemCam and Mastcam activities in the targeted remote sensing blocks. The team planned ChemCam LIBS on some different textures at “Cold Springs” and “Fishgut Lake” (umm, maybe I’ll skip that flavor…) and a ChemCam passive observation on “Quarry Peak” to assess a nearby light-toned slab. The team also planned a long distance ChemCam RMI to investigate the distribution of light-toned clasts at “Camp Four.” Multiple Mastcam mosaics are planned to document the ChemCam targets, monitor areas for change detection, characterize the diversity of textures, and assess stratigraphic relationships. And for good measure we also planned environmental monitoring activities including a Navcam line of sight observation, Mastcam tau, Navcam deck monitoring and dust devil survey, in addition to standard DAN and REMS observations.
You’d think we’d be stuffed by now, but the team is already strategizing what else we can get in the next plan before driving away. A sure sign of a delicious workspace.
Written by Lauren Edgar, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center
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Last Updated Jun 05, 2024 Related Terms
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