Astronomers directly imagine the planet just 35 light years away

In the hunt for exoplanets, astronomers are rarely able to look directly at a world with even the most powerful telescopes. So, it’s always remarkable when we can actually see a new exoplanet. Scientists at the University of Hawaii report that they have spotted a new exoplanet just 35 light years away, and we can see this one because it is huge and very far from its host star. In fact, he could set the record for the farthest.

The exoplanet was discovered as part of the COol Companions ON Ultrawide orbitS (COCONUTS) program. As its name suggests, this project is looking for exoplanets with very wide orbits around very cold stars. These two properties should make them easier to spot, as was the case with COCONUTS-2b – yes, there is finally an exoplanet with a good name.

Usually, detecting exoplanets means inferring their location and properties without even monitoring them mechanically. The most popular way is the transit method, which NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope used to discover thousands of exoplanets during its mission. By tracking the luminance of stars, we can detect when an exoplanet is passing in front of them. Of course, this only works for solar systems that are perfectly aligned with planets large enough relative to the star. The other method detects changes in radial velocity – small oscillations in the star caused by the gravity of orbiting planets. Again, this works best with larger planets.

Direct imaging of exoplanets is difficult because they are much smaller and darker than stars. This is why the COCONUTS program is looking for “COol” exoplanets in “ultralarge orbits”. These worlds should be easier to see in telescopes like the 2.2-meter unit at the University of Hawaii, and this appears to be the case with the discovery of COCONUTS-2b by graduate student Zhoujian Zhang. It’s the little red dot shown in the image above.

This exoplanet is about six times as massive as Jupiter, and it orbits its host star at a distance of 6471 astronomical units – one AU is the distance between Earth and the sun. By comparison, NASA’s Voyager probes have left the solar system in recent years at a distance of about 120-125 AU. Obviously, COCONUTS-2b is in an incredibly wide orbit. The team estimates that it will take 1.1 million years to complete a single pass around the star.

Even with all of this for us, COCONUTS-2b was a lucky detection. The solar system is still relatively young at around 800 million years old. Because COCONUTS-2b is so huge, it retained a lot of heat from its training – astronomers estimate it has a temperature of 322 degrees Fahrenheit (161 degrees Celsius). This makes it glow weakly in the infrared. Finding more planets like COCONUTS-2b could help us better understand the formation of planets. The upcoming James Webb telescope might be particularly able to help here with its improved infrared sensitivity compared to other instruments.

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