About 15 to 20 million years old, it is young on a planetary scale. NASA believes this is a “turning point” for astronomy, even though itIt is not the first time that a direct image of an exoplanet has been captured.
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The photo of a gas giant planet. The James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first direct image of an exoplanet, that is, a planet outside our solar system, according to a NASA blog post (in English) released Thursday, September 1.
The exoplanet, which responds to the name of HIP 65426 b, is six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter, an estimate that the telescope should help refine. Aged about 15 to 20 million years, it is young on the scale of the planets, especially if we compare it to the Earth and its approximately 4.5 billion years, recalled NASA. But life as we know it would be impossible there.
Each of Webb’s 4 views is 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, or tiny masks. The bar shapes in the NIRCam views are artifacts of the telescope optics, not physical objects. pic.twitter.com/RZGBioV4Qb
—NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) September 1, 2022
“This is a turning point, not just for Webb but for astronomy in general”, enthused Sasha Hinkley, professor of astrophysics at the University of Exeter, quoted by the American space agency. However, this is not the first time that a direct image of an exoplanet has been captured. The mythical Hubble space telescope, launched in 1990 and still in operation, had already done so.
But this picture “shows the way forward for Webb’s exoplanet exploration”, judged NASA. The fact that the James Webb telescope managed to draw the portrait “holds up future possibilities for studies of distant worlds”, the agency continued. The image was published in four copies, each time with a different light filter. The significant distance between this exoplanet and its star made it easier to differentiate them.