Astronomers operating NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have used it for the first time to point to a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun and take live images of it. The selected exoplanets are named HIP 65426 b and It is a gas giant six to 12 times the size of Jupiter. which means it has no rocky surface and is uninhabitable.

The image – published by NASA and not yet peer reviewed – shows the gas giant in four different light filters and highlights the telescope’s massive ability to easily capture worlds outside our solar system.

“This is a transformative moment, not only for Webb, but for astronomy in general,” said Sasha Hinkley, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Exeter, UK, who led these observations with extensive international collaboration. Keep in mind that the James Webb Space Telescope is an international mission led by NASA in collaboration with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

The exoplanet shown in the image is young in terms of planets: between 15 and 20 million years old, a baby compared to Earth, which is 4.5 billion years old. It is enormous, between six and twelve times the mass of Jupiter. The photos that have been taken can help determine the mass and size more precisely.

HIP 65426 b was first discovered in 2017 using the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and then imaged using short wavelength infrared light. Now Webb’s view, using the longer infrared wavelengths, reveals new details that ground-based telescopes cannot detect due to the intrinsic infrared emission of Earth’s atmosphere.

Researchers are now analyzing data from these observations and preparing papers for submission to journals for review. However, Webb’s first capture of an exoplanet already points to the future possibilities of this instrument for studying distant worlds.

Since HIP 65426 b is about 100 times farther from its parent star than Earth is from the Sun, it is far enough that Webb can easily separate planets from their stars in pictures.

Both Near Infrared Cameras (NIRCam) such as Central Infrared Instruments (MIRI) by Webb is equipped with a coronagraph, which is a collection of small masks that block out starlight. This allows the space telescope to take live images of certain exoplanets like this one.. According to Professor Sasha Hinkley, “It’s impressive how well the Webb coronagraph works to suppress light from the host star.” This same technology, but even more advanced, will also be incorporated into Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope NASA, whose launch is scheduled for the end of the decade.

Taking live pictures of exoplanets is a challenge because stars are much brighter than planets. The brightness of HIP 65426 b is more than 10,000 times fainter than its parent star in the near infrared, and several thousand times fainter in the middle infrared. In each picture taken with a different light filter planets appear as patches of light with slightly different shapes. This is due to the peculiarities of Webb’s optical system and how it translates light through different optics.

get this picture it’s like digging for space treasuresaid Aarynn Carter, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is responsible for leading the analysis of the images. “Initially all I could see was starlight, but with careful image processing, I was able to dispel that light and find the planet“.

Though This is not the first live image of an exoplanet taken from space – The Hubble Space Telescope has directly imaged exoplanets before – HIP 65426 b points the way forward for Webb’s exoplanet exploration.

“I believe it the most interesting thing is that we are just getting started“, comments Carter. “There are many more images of exoplanets to come that will shape our general understanding of their physics, chemistry and formation. We might even find hitherto unknown planets“.