The James Webb Telescope reveals the first image of an exoplanet

Picture of a gas giant planet. The James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first direct image of an exoplanet, that is, a planet outside our solar system, according to NASA Blog Post (in English) Released Thursday, September 1st.

The exoplanet, which responds to the name HIP 65426 b, is six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter, an estimate the telescope should help refine. Its age is about 15 to 20 million years, which is small on the planetary scale, especially if we compare it to Earth and is approximately 4.5 billion years old, NASA said. But life as we know it would be impossible there.

Each of Webb’s four views is a different wavelength of infrared light. The white star is the location of the host star. Its light is blocked by Webb masks or micro-masks. The ribbon shapes in the NIRCam sights are artifacts of 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.”Sasha Hinckley, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Exeter, quoted by the US space agency. However, this is not the first time that a direct image of an exoplanet has been taken. The legendary Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990 and still in operation, has already done just that.

But this picture “Illustrate the way forward for exoplanet Webb exploration”NASA. The fact that the James Webb Telescope managed to paint the picture “Holds the Future Possibilities of Far Worlds Studies”Agency continued. The photo was published in four copies, each time using a different optical filter. The large distance between this exoplanet and its star made it easy to distinguish between them.