The HIP 65426 b gas giant planet photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope on the
background of the Digitized Sky Survey (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA, A Carter (UCSC),
the ERS 1386 team, and A. Pagan (STScI))
The James Webb Space Telescope took its first direct image of a planet orbiting a distant star, proving its potential to revolutionize exoplanet research.
The absolute majority of exoplanets have only been observed through temporary dips in brightness of the stars they orbit; only about two dozen have been imaged directly. But that might soon change. Less than two months after it started its science operations, the James Webb Space Telescope has delivered its first direct photo of a planet beyond our solar system.
The planet, a gas giant orbiting the star called HIP 65426 some 385 light-years from Earth, appears in the image as a tiny splotch close to the glowing star. Webb photographed the exoplanet using its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), each of which focuses on a different flavor of infrared light.
"This is a transformative moment, not only for Webb but also for astronomy generally," Sasha Hinkley, an astronomer at the University of Exeter in the U.K. who led these observations, said in a statement(opens in new tab).
Scientists had discovered the planet in 2017 with the Very Large Telescope in Chile; Webb isn't tailored to discovering new exoplanets and will instead excel at teaching scientists about worlds other observatories identified.
Exoplanets are extremely difficult to observe directly because they are so much fainter than the stars they orbit. This one, HIP 65426 b, could only be spotted thanks to a combination of factors. First, it's extremely far away from its parent star, 100 times the distance from the sun to Earth (for comparison, Pluto orbits only 40 sun-Earth distances from the sun). Second, HIP 65426 b is also extremely massive — 12 times the size of Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet. READ MORE...
