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Webb gets first direct infrared image of exoplanet

Exoplanet as seen in the infrared by Webb

Using the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have obtained that telescope’s first direct infrared image of an exoplanet, covering four different wavelengths.

The image to the right is from the wavelength image with the least distortion (formed by Webb’s own optics and the shape of its mirror and indicated by the faint ring surrounding the planet). The star indicates the masked location of the star itself.

The planet is about seven times the mass of Jupiter and lies more than 100 times farther from its star than Earth sits from the sun, direct observations of exoplanet HIP 65426 b show. It’s also young, about 10 million or 20 million years old, compared with the more than 4-billion-year-old Earth.

You can download the full research paper here.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

One comment

  • David Ross

    I apologise for tossing a bucket of chilly H2O upon this post, but we do need to make a few points clear:
    As I read the arxiv paper, this planet was not discovered by JWST. JWST was trained upon HIP 65426 because we already knew since 2017 the existence of a wide-orbit planet there.
    Also Science News‘ byline reads 2 September. Luckily the base paper has been updated since then, 28 September, so it’s presumably a better paper than it was…
    Although: other direct-images exist for other stars in this stellar-association, “Lower Centaurus-Crux”. Maybe JWST can point at some of those and make real discoveries.

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