File:NASA’s Webb Takes Its First-Ever Direct Image of Distant World.png

English: Talk about out of this world! This is Webb’s first direct image of a planet outside of our solar system, and it hints at Webb’s future possibilities for studying distant worlds. Not what you expected? Let’s walk through the details.

Shown here is a gas giant named HIP 65426 b, which is about six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter. It is young as planets go — about 15 to 20 million years old, compared to our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth.

The four views of this planet, taken by Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI instruments, 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. (Coronagraphs are 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.

But why don’t these look like images of our solar system captured by missions like Juno or Cassini? The answer is that space is big and exoplanets are small — and far away from us! Don’t forget, we didn’t get our first detailed look at Pluto until 2015 when New Horizons visited.

Fun fact: 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 is how big space is! And that is why exoplanet imagery from near Earth shows just dots of light.

Though Webb can potentially discover new planets, this one was found in 2017 using the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Above Earth’s atmosphere, Webb can see details of this planet that ground-based telescopes cannot.

“Obtaining this image felt like digging 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 light from the star, but with careful image processing I was able to remove that light and uncover the planet.”

Read more: go.nasa.gov/3wNDa4Y

Credits: NASA/ESA/CSA, A Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team, and A. Pagan (STScI).

Image description:

The star HIP 65426 & 4 views of its planet “b.” The background of the image is black with many white & blue stars; it is not from Webb and is labeled the “Digitized Sky Survey.” Star HIP 65426 is labeled at top center. It has 4 diffraction spikes (telescope artifacts) from the top, bottom, left, & right. Diagonal lines down from the star to the bottom of the image highlight 4 inset boxes. From left to right, first is Webb’s NIRCam view of the exoplanet. It's a purple dot with purple bars at 11 & 5 o’clock. The bars are telescope artifacts, not physically present. The planet & artifacts have been colored purple. The filter used, F300M (3 micrometers), is on the image. Next is a similar NIRCam view using filter F444W (4.44 micrometers). This view is colored blue & has the artifact bars. Next is a MIRI view, colored orange. No bars are present. The filter is F1140C (11.40 micrometers). Finally, a MIRI view using filter F1550C (15.50 micrometers). It is a red large dot. A white star icon on all 4 images represents the parent star.