2024-07-26 20:00:00
Eps Ind Ab is located about 12 light-years from our solar system
The James Webb Space Telescope is allowing us to study the universe like never before. Its instruments have recently captured everything from a “dead” galaxy to a celestial body that smells like rotten eggs. Now it’s time to get to know a massive exoplanet of the ‘super Jupiter’ type that is quite particular.
An international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany has been studying a series of data captured by this observing instrument since last year. However, it wasn’t until last Wednesday that they published their findings in the scientific journal Nature.
An ancient and cold gas giant
The study suggests that Eps Ind Ab is located about 12 light-years away from our solar system. This is a fairly short distance. For example, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbor of the Milky Way, is about 160,000 light-years from our solar system. The exoplanet WASP-43b is about 238 light-years away.
Eps Ind Ab fits the characteristics to be considered a ‘super Jupiter’. It is a gas giant, approximately six times the size of Jupiter. Additionally, this exoplanet has an orbit that is about 15 times farther than that of the Earth and the Sun, taking about 200 years to complete one orbit around its star.
However, this is not the first time astronomers have detected data from this planet, but they had previously underestimated its mass and orbital separation. More recent studies have allowed not only to determine its orbit with high precision but also to identify characteristics such as its composition and climate.
While it appears as a bright point in the images, the various instruments on the James Webb have allowed for the collection of a variety of scientific data. First of all, we are looking at the first exoplanet “photographed” by the telescope that had not been photographed from our planet before.
Scientists also state that Eps Ind Ab is much colder than any other gas giant studied so far. Regarding the age of this celestial body, it is believed to be about 3.5 billion years old. While this suggests it is about 1,000 years younger than our solar system, it is still very ancient.
Let us remember that telescopes are like “time machines.” And this is one of the most fascinating things about astronomy. When we observe any distant object, we are seeing it as it was at the moment the light we detect began to travel towards our planet, so what we see is an image of the past.
Images | Max Planck Institute
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