Astronomers using the James Webb space telescope have directly detected the low glow of a colder planet than any world whose light has been directly observed – an amazing detection which reveals the extreme conditions of certain worlds of our universe.
The exoplanet, WD 1856 + 534 B, was spotted for the first time in 2020 and is twice as old as our solar system. The world is about the size of Jupiter but about six times more massive and much colder, blocking at an average temperature of only -125 ° Fahrenheit (-87 ° Celsius). This makes it the coldest exoplanet ever directly observed by its own light emitted. The research of the team describing the exoplanet and its thermal emissions are currently hosted on the Arxiv preparatory server.
The exoplanet is in orbit around a white dwarf, the ghostly embers of a dead star. In fact, this is what made the detection of the object possible; As a rule, the stars are so brilliant that they drown the much duller glow of the planets in orbit. The WD 1856 B star is so weak that the exoplanet itself was visible by webb’s gaze. Astronome Mary Anne Limbach, from the Astronomy Department of the University of Michigan, contributed to the study.
What is probably more strange is the place where this planet drags. WD 1856 B Orbits only 0.02 astronomical units of its white dwarf star – from Mercury is in our sun. “WD 1856 + 534 B is now the first intact exoplanet confirmed in the” prohibited zone “of a white dwarf, a region where the planets would have been swallowed up during the giant red star of the star”, explained the team in the document, adding that its “presence provides direct proof that planetary migration is possible.”
The work of the team also puts WD 1856 at the top of the peaking order of the cold world. Just behind, Epsilon Inda AB, a planet studied by webb last year, which made it at the time the coldest imaginary planet beyond our solar system at an estimated temperature of 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees C). Just say that WD 1856 B is much colder.
The results also govern a persistent identity crisis. So far, WD 1856 B could have been a low -mass brown dwarf. But with its low temperature and revised mass estimates (no more than 5.9 masses of Jupiter), it is officially part of the catalog of thousands of scientists from exoplanets have compiled in recent decades.
Research is also proof of a major concept for JWST’s ability to study cold and mature planets – and a reminder that even the orbit worlds around the burned nuclei of dead stars can still shine, so weakly.
