NASA releases images of the coldest exoplanet ever photographed

NASA has taken to its website to detail newly snapped images of an exoplanet called Epsilon Indi Ab, which the space agency says is one of coldest exoplanets it has observed to date.

An international team of astronomers pointed Webb's extremely powerful infrared instruments at the exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab, which is approximately 12 light-years away from Earth and within the constellation of Indus. The planet orbits the K-type star known as Epsilon Indi A, which is approximately the same age as our Sun, only slightly cooler. The team used Webb's MIRI instrument, which stands for Mid-Infrared Instrument, to directly image the exoplanet and reveal its interesting properties.

The space agency explains Epsilon Indi Ab is one of the coldest exoplanets to be directly detected, measuring an extremely freezing temperature of 35 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius. Notably, Epsilon Indi Ab is the closest planet to Earth that is more massive than Jupiter, and is the twelfth closest exoplanet to Earth known to date.

"This discovery is exciting because the planet is quite similar to Jupiter - it is a little warmer and is more massive, but is more similar to Jupiter than any other planet that has been imaged so far," added lead author Elisabeth Matthews of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.

"Astronomers have been imagining planets in this system for decades; fictional planets orbiting Epsilon Indi have been the sites of Star Trek episodes, novels, and video games like Halo. It's exciting to actually see a planet there ourselves, and begin to measure its properties," said team member Caroline Morley of the University of Texas at Austin