The James Webb Space Telescope has already taken its first picture of an exoplanet - and its performance is so good that we may even be able to detect clouds on alien worlds
Now, Hinkley and his colleagues have used JWST to directly image a so-called super-Jupiter exoplanet, HIP 65426 b, which is around seven Jupiter masses and orbits a star around 400 light years from Earth. The team captured it in a range of infrared wavelengths and at a precision that had previously been impossible.
HIP 65426 b is relatively young and hot, meaning it is easier to image. It had previously been observed by ground-based telescopes, which is why the researchers used it to test out JWST’s exoplanet-imaging capabilities. They found that JWST performed 10 times better than expected and was much more sensitive than any previous telescopes.
Imaging HIP 65426 b is tricky because it orbits so close to its host star, which creates a high contrast in brightness. Hinkley and his team used a coronagraph to block out the star’s light, allowing them to see the image across a range of wavelengths.
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James Webb Space Telescope snags its 1st direct photo of an alien worldTereza is a London-based science and technology journalist, aspiring fiction writer and amateur gymnast. Originally from Prague, the Czech Republic, she spent the first seven years of her career working as a reporter, script-writer and presenter for various TV programmes of the Czech Public Service Television. She later took a career break to pursue further education and added a Master's in Science from the International Space University, France, to her Bachelor's in Journalism and Master's in Cultural Anthropology from Prague's Charles University. She worked as a reporter at the Engineering and Technology magazine, freelanced for a range of publications including Live Science, Space.com, Professional Engineering, Via Satellite and Space News and served as a maternity cover science editor at the European Space Agency.
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