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 statement on Thursday. This planet is a gas giant, where life as we know it would be impossible.
“This is a turning point, not just for Webb but for astronomy in general,” said Sasha Hinkley, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Exeter.
The exoplanet, which goes by the name HIP 65426 b, is between six and 12 times the mass of Jupiter, an estimate the telescope should help refine. With an age of about 15 to 20 million years, it is young on the scale of the planets – especially if we compare it with the Earth and it is about 4.5 billion years old – NASA recalled.
A “space treasure”
This is not the first time that an exoplanet has been directly imaged. The mythical Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990 and still in operation, had already done so. But this image “shows the way forward for Webb’s exoplanet exploration,” NASA said.
The fact that the James Webb Telescope managed to draw the portrait “supports the future possibilities of studies of distant worlds,” the agency continued.
The image was published in four copies, each time with a different light filter. The important distance between this exoplanet and its star facilitated its differentiation.
“Getting this image was like searching for space treasure,” said Aarynn Carter, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who worked on the analysis of the shots.
An engineering gem valued at ten billion dollars, the James Webb Telescope makes its observations 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. At the end of August, it had detected the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time, a discovery that had scientists excited to continue their observations.
Source: BFM TV
