JWST spies frigid alien world on bizarre orbit: 'One of the coldest, oldest and faintest planets that we've imaged to date

[Admin]

The James Webb Space Telescope has notched another milestone, capturing a direct image of one of the coldest and oldest known exoplanets.

JWST spies frigid alien world on bizarre orbit: 'One of the coldest, oldest and faintest planets that we've imaged to date : Read more

 

[rod]

Space.com reported, "But, unlike the flat, well-ordered orbits of planets in our solar system, the 14 Herculis system is dramatically misaligned. Its two known planets, including 14 Her c, orbit at angles of about 40 degrees to each other, creating an "X"-like crossing pattern around their star. This unusual layout may have been caused by the early ejection of a third massive planet from the system, throwing the remaining two into a gravitationally turbulent "planetary tug of war," Balmer said. "These wobbles appear to be stable over long time scales," he said. "We're trying to understand what kinds of planet-planet scatterings could produce such an exotic configuration of orbits."

Misaligned exoplanet systems are known. Example, WASP-131 b. Bizarre exoplanet breaks all the orbital rules, https://phys.org/news/2023-05-bizarre-exoplanet-orbital.html. My note, from the discussion and conclusion - "Overall, we determined the differential rotational shear of WASP-131 and the true 3D obliquitiy of this system for the first time. WASP-131 b joins a group of polar orbiting misaligned planets (see Albrecht et al. 2021) which will help shed some light on the processes responsible for their formation and evolution."

There are more than 900 exoplanets now that are imaged listed at this site, https://exoplanet.eu/home/

 

[Unclear Engineer]

So, maybe our solar system has a "planet 9" in some sort of highly oblique "polar" orbit around our Sun? That would sure make it hard to find from here.

 

[rod]

I would like to see more reporting on misaligned exoplanet systems too. A good database showing this is needed IMO. Also there are surprises reported now for protoplanetary disc sizes (smaller than anticipated) and gas rapidly depleting too. Some problems in accretion modeling for planets show up it appears.

Tiny Disks Shed Light on Super-Earth Origins, Sky & Telescope 150(2):11, August 2025. My note, reported 28-March-2025, (https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/tiny-disks-shed-light-on-super-earth-origins/). A 5 earth mass super-earth with radii 1.8 earth radii, mean density 4.7 g cm^-3 and surface gravity a bit more than 1.5 g. These small discs reported need a large amount of gas and dust to form a super-earth. I did not see gas and dust mass reported for the 73 discs.

Planet-forming disks lose gas faster than dust, new survey finds, https://phys.org/news/2025-06-planet-disks-gas-faster-survey.html

 

[Helio]

So, maybe our solar system has a "planet 9" in some sort of highly oblique "polar" orbit around our Sun? That would sure make it hard to find from here.

Yes, and if it is aligned to the galactic plane, it's likely much harder to find as well.

15 AU isn't all that unusual of a distance. There are over 300 that are farther out in orbit. Also, there are 120 that are between the distance of Saturn (9.6 AU) and Neptune (30 AU). The eccentricity, of course, is very unusual.