@nasawebb

Talk about out of this world! Webb’s first direct image of a planet outside of our solar system hints at future possibilities for studying distant worlds. Gas giant HIP 65426 b is about 6-12 times the mass of Jupiter. The second slide shows the region of sky this planet and its star are in. The starry black background is labeled as the “Digitized Sky Survey.” Star HIP 65426, which has 4 diffraction spikes, is labeled at top center. Diagonal lines run down from the star to the bottom of the image, highlighting 4 boxes. From left to right, the first box features a view of HIP 65426 b from Webb’s NIRCam instrument. It’s a purple dot with purple bars at 11 and 5 o’clock. The filter used is F300M (3 micrometers). The next box is another NIRCam view using filter F444W (4.44 micrometers). This view is colored blue, with blue bars. The third box is a view from Webb’s MIRI instrument, colored orange. The filter is F1140C (11.40 micrometers). Finally, there is a MIRI view using filter F1550C (15.50 micrometers). It is a large red dot. Each of the 4 boxes has a white star icon. What does this mean? As the third slide explains, the four views of this planet are each at a different wavelength of infrared light. The white star is the location of the host star. Its light is blocked by Webb’s coronagraphs — sets of tiny masks that block out starlight, making it possible to see planets around them. The bar shapes in the NIRCam views are artifacts of the telescope optics, not physical objects. Remember: space is big, and exoplanets are small and far away. If we sent a telescope to the nearest exoplanet traveling at the same rate as Voyager (17.3 km/sec), it would take 73,000 years to reach it. That’s why exoplanet imagery from near Earth shows just dots of light. “Obtaining this image felt like digging for space treasure,” said Aarynn Carter, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “At first all I could see was light from the star, but with careful image processing I was able to remove that light and uncover the planet.” Read more at the link in our bio! Credits: NASA/ESA/CSA, A Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team, and A. Pagan (STScI)