In a groundbreaking discovery, Dr. Prashant Pathak from IIT Kanpur and a team of international astronomers have traced a giant planet comparable in size to the Sun within our solar system. Utilizing the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), the team directly imaged the planet, named Epsilon Indi Ab, marking it as the first directly imaged mature exoplanet near Earth.
Epsilon Indi Ab, classified as a super Jupiter, boasts a mass at least six times that of Jupiter, making it the most giant planet in our solar system. Located 12 light-years from Earth, the planet is notably cold, with temperatures around -1°C (30°F). Its immense orbit is 28 times greater than the distance between Earth and the Sun, revealing a unique atmospheric composition with high metal content and an unusual carbon-to-oxygen ratio.
Previous attempts to study Epsilon Indi Ab using radial velocity measurements were unsuccessful due to its long orbital period of around 200 years. However, the direct imaging approach employed by Dr. Pathak’s team, aided by the JWST MIRI camera’s coronagraph, successfully blocked the starlight and enabled the detection of the planet’s faint signals, akin to observing a solar corona during an eclipse.
Dr. Pathak emphasized the discovery’s significance, highlighting its potential to advance understanding of planetary formation, atmospheric composition, and the potential for life beyond our solar system. IIT Kanpur Director Prof. Manindra Agrawal hailed the discovery as a significant milestone in exoplanet research, underscoring IIT Kanpur’s global contributions to space science.
Elisabeth Matthews, the lead author of the research article from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and Thomas Henning, Emeritus Director at MPIA, expressed excitement about the unexpected findings and outlined future goals to obtain detailed spectra of the planet’s climatology and chemical composition. The team aims to extend their research to nearby planetary systems, enhancing the understanding of gas giant formation and evolution.
The detailed findings and research have been published in the renowned science journal, Nature.
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