NASA announced on the 24th that an international research team has captured an exoplanet approximately 12 light-years away from Earth using the agency's James Webb Space Telescope. This gas giant planet, resembling Jupiter, is one of the coldest exoplanets directly detected by humans to date. The study, published in the British journal Nature on the same day, showed that a research team led by German researchers used the mid infrared instrument on the Webb Space Telescope to directly capture an exoplanet named Indian ε Ab, which has a mass several times that of Jupiter and an estimated surface temperature of 2 degrees Celsius. According to the US space website, this planet orbits its red dwarf parent star at a distance similar to the distance between Neptune and the Sun, so it takes approximately 200 Earth years to complete one orbit. Astronomers often use the "radial velocity method" or "transit method" to detect exoplanets, but it is not easy to use these two methods to detect cold planets such as Indian ε Ab that orbit in highly elliptical orbits and are far away from their parent stars. For this reason, the research team chose to use the "coronagraph" of the mid infrared instrument to directly image this planet. They also attempted to use detection data to understand the atmosphere of this planet, and the analysis results showed that the atmosphere of this planet seems to contain methane, carbon dioxide, and other substances. According to NASA, researchers will further analyze the Indian ε Ab and explore other similar planets to better understand the evolution of gas giant planets and their systems. (New Society)