NASA has released four different views of HIP 65426 b, the first planet outside our solar system captured by the $10bn (£8.65bn) space telescope.
For the first time, astronomers have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system, in what has been described as a “historic moment for astronomy”.
The exoplanet chosen was HIP 65426 b, which is six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter and 15 to 20 million years old, a young age compared to Planet Earth’s 4.5 billion years. Because the planet is a gas giant, similar to Jupiter, it would never be habitable for living organisms.
The image, viewed through four different light filters, shows how Webb’s powerful infrared gaze can easily capture worlds beyond our solar system.
“This is a transformative moment, not just for Webb, but for astronomy in general,” said Sasha Hinkley, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter. “James Webb will open the door to a new class of planets that have been completely out of our reach and by observing them at a wide range of wavelengths we can study their compositions in a much deeper way.
One image shows the exoplanet HIP 65426 b in different bands of infrared light, as seen from the James Webb Space Telescope. / Nasa
Image credit: NASA
Direct imaging of exoplanets is challenging because stars are much brighter than planets. The planet HIP 65426 b is more than 10,000 times fainter than its host star in the near-infrared and several thousand times fainter in the mid-infrared.
HIP 65426 b was first discovered in 2017 by astronomers using the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. Because of Webb’s longer infrared wavelengths, its images have revealed new details that ground-based telescopes would not be able to detect due to the intrinsic infrared glow of the Earth’s atmosphere.
“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. “At first all I could see was the light from the star, but with careful image processing I was able to remove that light and discover the planet.”
Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are equipped with coronagraphs, which are sets of tiny masks that block starlight, allowing Webb to take direct images of certain exoplanets like this one.
While this is not the first direct image of an exoplanet taken from space (the Hubble Space Telescope has previously captured direct images of an exoplanet), it is the first image of an exoplanet using infrared light, which gives a much more accurate indication of a planet’s mass and temperature and will allow astronomers to detect the planet’s climate.
“I think the most exciting thing is that we’re just getting started,” Carter said. “There are many more images of exoplanets to come that will shape our overall understanding of their physics, chemistry and formation. We may even discover previously unknown planets as well.”
JWST is the largest and most powerful space science telescope ever launched, designed to give scientists a more detailed look at the beginning of the universe, the birth of stars and possibly the origins of life.
After 14 years of delays, the telescope launched on an Ariane 5 rocket on Christmas Day 2021 from the European spaceport in French Guiana. After launch, JWST underwent an agonizing months-long process of slowly deploying its tennis-court-sized sunshade as NASA engineers anxiously watched to see if it had been damaged during the launch process. .
JWST’s light-gathering capacity is more than twice that of Hubble, and its size is larger than two double-decker buses. In the eight months it has been in space, the device has already allowed scientists to take unprecedented images, such as those of Jupiter’s storms and what has been billed as the “deepest view of the universe” ever now
In the future, the James Webb Space Telescope is expected to make detailed observations of distant planets more similar to Earth, including those with potentially habitable conditions.
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