Rare phenomenon: James Webb finds two exoplanets that survived death of their stars

The James Webb Space Observatory captured an extremely rare phenomenon - two exoplanets that survived the death of their stars. Now these exoplanets are orbiting two different dead stars, also called "white dwarfs."

These exoplanets are very similar to the solar system's gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, and the white dwarfs they orbit were once stars like our Sun. According to scientists, the Sun will one day also turn into a white dwarf, as a result of which, most likely, all the inner planets of the solar system up to Jupiter will be destroyed.

The exoplanets were discovered by the mid-infrared MIRI instrument when the white dwarfs WD 1202-232 and WD 2105-82 came into view of the telescope. One of the exoplanets orbits a white dwarf at a distance of about 11.5 times the Earth's distance from the Sun. The second is even further from its star - the distance between them is 34.5 times greater than the distance between our planet and the Sun.

The masses of both exoplanets are still unknown; new observations will be needed to determine them, but until then they will be considered exoplanet candidates. In the meantime, scientists believe that each of them can be from 1 to 7 times heavier than Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.

The previous orbits of these planets, according to scientists, were much closer to the stars, but the death of the stars and their transformation into red giants entailed a change in the orbits of the giant exoplanets orbiting them.

According to scientists, the systems WD 1202-232 and WD 2105-82, in a sense, show us the future of the Solar System: in about 5 billion years, the Sun will go through the red giant stage and shed its outer shell, leaving a cooling core - a white dwarf - in the center of the system.

This observation showed scientists another interesting fact: these exoplanet candidates were much hotter in a certain range of the infrared spectrum than expected. This may indicate that they may have satellites that may provide additional heat. If so, we may have a chance to discover an exomoon for the first time.

The paper on this discovery has not yet been peer-reviewed and is on arXiv.