The Webb Space Telescope Has Just Revealed Its First Image Of A Distant Exoplanet

Image: NASA/Chris Gunn The super-powerful $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first image of an exoplanet outside our solar system. According to NASA, the exoplanet “HIP 65426 b” is a gas giant that has no rocky surface and is the first planet Webb has imaged outside our solar system. HIP 65426 b is about 100 times farther from its host star than Earth is from the Sun. This puts it far enough from Webb’s host star to separate the exoplanet from the star in the image, but it was still a technical feat to do so. WATCH: What is Artemis? Everything you need to know about NASA’s mission to the new moon The image shows how Webb can use infrared light to capture details about exoplanets that cannot be picked up by telescopes from Earth.
HIP 65426 b is about 15 to 20 million years old, making it relatively young compared to Earth’s 4.5 billion years. It was discovered in 2017 through short infrared wavelengths of light at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, but couldn’t reveal the details that Webb could because of the infrared glow of Earth’s atmosphere. Webb, on the other hand, can use longer infrared wavelengths to reveal more details, such as that it is about six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter. To block light from its host star, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) use “coronagraphs,” or light masks, allowing it to capture images of the planet otherwise obscured by brighter host star. Sasha Hinkley, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter in the UK, led the exoplanet observations. He described it as a “transformational moment” for astronomy. “It was really impressive how well the Webb coronagraphs worked to suppress the starlight,” Hinckley said. Astronomers want to measure the size and mass of exoplanets to figure out what they’re made of. They could be rocky like Earth and Venus – NASA astronomers believe Venus could have been habitable at one point – or gaseous, like Jupiter and Saturn. WATCH: SpaceX’s Starlink Internet Now Heading to Cruise Ships in ‘Game Changing’ Deal The first exoplanets appeared in the 1990s. Scientists hope that the current number of thousands of exoplanets discovered will increase to tens of thousands in the near future, thanks to space telescopes like Hubble and Webb. Exoplanets are usually discovered by observing changes in light as a planet passes in front of it.
According to the Guardian, HIP 65426 is located 385 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centauri, and the planet’s atmospheric temperature is about 1,300 C (2,370 F). The atmosphere probably contains red clouds of silica dust. “It would be a terrible place to live,” Hinckley said. “You’d be roasted alive if you could float in the atmosphere.” The James Webb Space Telescope is run by NASA with its partners the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. NASA released its first images in July, revealing stunning images farther away than humanity has seen before. “Getting this image was like hunting for space treasure,” said Aarynn Carter, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the analysis of the images. HIP 65426 is located 385 light-years from Earth. Image: NASA