'Strange' Planetary System With Unusual Orbit Intrigues Scientists
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a clear and direct image of a distant planet in a planetary system which is described by scientists as "abnormal", "chaotic" and "strange". The planet named 14 Herculis c (or 14 Her c) is an exoplanet located approximately 58.4 light-years away in the constellation of Hercules in the Milky Way galaxy.
The planet was formed around four billion years ago and has a frigid atmospheric temperature of just minus 3 degrees Celsius. The exoplanet is one of the coldest captured to date.
"The colder an exoplanet, the harder it is to image, so this is a totally new regime of study that Webb has unlocked with its extreme sensitivity in the infrared," William Balmer, co-first author of the new paper and graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, was quoted as saying by NASA.
"We are now able to add to the catalog of not just hot, young exoplanets imaged, but older exoplanets that are far colder than we've directly seen before Webb," Balmer added.
The planet 14 Herculis c is a gas giant, roughly the same size as Jupiter but much more massive, with a mass of 7.1 Jupiter masses. The planet orbits its star, 14 Herculis, at a distance of about 27.4 astronomical units (AU), taking around 142.8 years to complete one orbit.
In the latest image taken by JWST, 14 Her c appears as a faint orange dot. Its colour is a result of heat radiating from its atmosphere, which translates into visible hues.
Why is this planetary system misaligned?
NASA revealed that there are two planets in this system - 14 Herculis b is closer to the star. But they have an unusual orbit as these planets cross each other like an 'X', with the host star at the centre. For the first time, an image of a misaligned system has been taken, leaving scientists worried about how the planets got so "off track".
"The early evolution of our own solar system was dominated by the movement and pull of our own gas giants. They threw around asteroids and rearranged other planets. Here, we are seeing the aftermath of a more violent planetary crime scene. It reminds us that something similar could have happened to our own solar system, and that the outcomes for small planets like Earth are often dictated by much larger forces," added Balmer.
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