Latest news with #60lightyears
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
JWST spies frigid alien world on bizarre orbit: 'One of the coldest, oldest and faintest planets that we've imaged to date'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has notched another milestone, capturing a direct image of a distant, frigid planet in a solar system unlike our own, astronomers announced on Tuesday (June 10). The exoplanet — named 14 Herculis c, or 14 Her c for short — orbits a sunlike star about 60 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hercules. In the new JWST image, it appears as a faint, fuzzy orange dot, its color a result of heat radiating from its atmosphere translated into visible hues. Astronomers estimate that 14 Her c formed around 4 billion years ago and has a frigid atmospheric temperature of just 26 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 3 degrees Celsius). 14 Her c orbits its star at a distance of about 1.4 billion miles (2.2 billion kilometers), or roughly 15 times farther from its star than Earth is from the sun. If placed in our solar system, it would sit between Saturn and Uranus. But, unlike the flat, well-ordered orbits of planets in our solar system, the 14 Herculis system is dramatically misaligned. Its two known planets, including 14 Her c, orbit at angles of about 40 degrees to each other, creating an "X"-like crossing pattern around their star. This unusual layout may have been caused by the early ejection of a third massive planet from the system, throwing the remaining two into a gravitationally turbulent "planetary tug of war," Balmer said. "These wobbles appear to be stable over long time scales," he said. "We're trying to understand what kinds of planet-planet scatterings could produce such an exotic configuration of orbits." This instability turned out to be a scientific advantage for Balmer's team. Of the nearly 6,000 known exoplanets, only a small fraction have been directly imaged. "Doing this is very technically challenging," said Balmer. Planets shine thousands — and, in some cases, even millions or billions — of times fainter than the stars they orbit, so they "are like fireflies next to lighthouses," he said. Most directly imaged exoplanets are hot, young gas giants that emit enough infrared light to stand out from the intense glare of their host stars. In contrast, colder and older planets like 14 Her c are usually far too dim to detect. The planet's tilted, off-kilter orbit, however, "is great news for direct imaging," Balmer said. "We could confidently predict that JWST could resolve the outermost planet in the system." Using the telescope's specialized starlight-blocking device known as a coronagraph, Balmer and his team succeeded in isolating the planet's faint infrared glow. "We are now able to add to the catalog older exoplanets that are far colder than we've directly seen before Webb," Balmer said in a statement. Based on 14 Her c's estimated age of around 4 billion years, its mass of about seven times that of Jupiter, and computer models of how planets evolve, the researchers expected the planet to appear brighter — or emit more heat — than it actually does in the JWST image. "The planet's actually significantly fainter than what we'd expect," said Balmer. "We don't think that this is a problem with the evolutionary models, however." RELATED STORIES — Exoplanet's surface may be covered in oceans, James Webb Space Telescope finds — Exoplanets: Everything you need to know about the worlds beyond our solar system — James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — A complete guide Probing the world's atmosphere, JWST detected carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide at temperatures where methane would typically be expected, which suggests that strong updrafts carry hot gases from deep within the atmosphere to colder upper layers, Balmer said. These gases, possibly along with thin icy clouds, reduce the heat escaping into space, making the planet appear cooler and fainter than expected. With 14 Her c, astronomers have broadened the range of exoplanets they can study. By examining planets with diverse masses, temperatures and orbital histories, scientists hope to gain a deeper understanding of how planetary systems, including our own, form and evolve. "We want to understand how these planets change, because we want to understand how we got here," said Balmer.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Science
- Forbes
Webb Telescope Photographs ‘Strange' Cold Planet Around Nearby Star
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first direct image of an exoplanet — a planet orbiting a star other than the sun — despite it being extremely cold. The planet, called 14 Herculis c, could give scientists a new perspective on how planetary systems across the Milky Way galaxy evolve. As exoplanets go, o, 14 Herculis c is huge — about seven times the mass of Jupiter. It can be found between the bright stars Vega and Arcturus in the night sky tonight, in the constellation Hercules, 'The Hero.' It's about 60 light-years from the solar system. 14 Herculis c is one of the coldest exoplanets ever directly imaged by a telescope. Most directly imaged exoplanets are extremely hot, but 14 Herculis is just 26 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 3 degrees Celsius). 14 Herculis c orbits an almost sun-like star, but it's not alone. There's a second planet closer to the host star that's hidden by the black disk in the image, above, called a coronagraph, which the Webb Telescope uses to block out the star's light, making its search for dim planets easier. If it was in the solar system, 14 Herculis c would be approximately 15 times farther from the sun than Earth — about 1.4 billion miles. That would put it somewhere between the sixth planet, Saturn, and the seventh planet, Uranus. Unlike the solar system, where all planets orbit the sun in the same plane, the two planets in the 14 Herculis star system are misaligned, with their orbital planes inclined relative to one another at an angle of about 40 degrees. Scientists believe a third planet may have been violently ejected from the system early in its formation, resulting in the unusual misalignment. 'The early evolution of our own solar system was dominated by the movement and pull of our own gas giants, [which] threw around asteroids and rearranged other planets,' said William Balmer, co-first author of a paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and presented in a press conference Tuesday, June 10 at the 246th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Anchorage, Alaska. '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.' The Webb Telescope's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) was able to directly image 14 Herculis c because it can capture near-infrared light — radiation just beyond the visible spectrum. That's critical to this observation because cold objects shine brightly only in infrared light. 'The colder an exoplanet, the harder it is to image, so this is a new regime of study that Webb has unlocked with its extreme sensitivity in the infrared,' said Balmer. '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.' The Webb Telescope has a primary mirror with a diameter of 21 feet/6.5 meters. It's made from beryllium and made-up of 18 hexagonal segments, each one covered in a super-thin layer of gold that's perfect for reflecting infrared light. It was designed to last for five-10 years, but fuel-saving during its precise launch on Christmas Day, 2021, means it's now expected to last for up to 20 years.
