Pic of the Week: View of a Nearby Exoplanet

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): JWST’s view of exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, E. Matthews (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy))

This week’s image looks dark and simple, and yet it is an amazing sight provided by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It shows a directly imaged exoplanets that resides about 12 light-years from us. It is called Epsilon Indi Ab and is several times the mass of Jupiter.

Here is an explanation from NASA about what you are seeing in the image:

This image of the gas-giant exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab was taken with the on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). A star symbol marks the location of the host star Epsilon Indi A, whose light has been blocked by the coronagraph, resulting in the dark circle marked with a dashed white line. Epsilon Indi Ab is one of the coldest exoplanets ever directly imaged. Light at 10.6 microns was assigned the color blue, while light at 15.5 microns was assigned the color orange. MIRI did not resolve the planet, which is a point source.