New York, Sep 2 : For the first time, astronomers utilized NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to capture an image direct of the planet that is outside the solar system.The exoplanet known as “HIP 65426 B” is gas giant, which means it is not a rock surface and is therefore not habitable.
The exoplanet has a mass of six to twelve times the weight of Jupiter and these observations may help narrow it down even more.
It’s young, between 15-20 million years old when compared with our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth.
“This is a moment of transformation not just for Webb but as well for astronomy in general.” declared Sasha Hinkley, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Exeter in the UK.
The image that is seen by the lens of four different filters illustrates how Webb’s incredibly powerful infrared vision can observe worlds that aren’t part of the solar system.and point towards future observations which will reveal more than ever before about exoplanets the space agency stated in an announcement.
The image below shows the exoplanet known as ‘HIP 65426 B’ in different bands of infrared light.
A series of masks in each instrument, referred to as coronagraphs, block the star’s light source to ensure that the planet can be observed.
Astronomers found the planet in 2017 with the SPHERE instrument that is part of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and captured images of it using infrared wavelengths of light.
Webb’s view, with its longer wavelengths of infrared, reveals new details that ground-based telescopes will not be able to discern due to the nature of the infrared light of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Since ‘HIP 65426b is approximately 100 times further from its star than Earth is from the Sun It is also sufficiently away from the star so that Webb is able to easily separate it from the star in the image.
“It was truly impressive how the Webb coronagraphs could block the bright light of the main star,” Hinkley said.
Direct images of exoplanets is difficult because stars are more bright than planets.
The “HIP 65426 b” planet is over 10,000 times less bright than the star it is a part of in the near-infrared spectrum, and only a couple of thousand times fainter in the mid-infrared.
“Obtaining this image was like searching for treasures in space,” said Aarynn Carter who is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
In July, James Webb Space Telescope produced the most detailed and sharpest infrared images of the universe’s distant regions to date.
na/kvd
