James Webb: The Super Telescope releases its first image of an exoplanet | Sciences

In the image above, the highlight shows images of an exoplanet. NASA explains that the small white star in each square indicates the location of the host star of hip 65426 b, which was digitally subtracted because the star’s strong light obscures the view of the planet.

An exoplanet is a gas giant 355 light years And about eight times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Since it consists of gas, this star has no rocky surface and cannot be habitable.

According to NASA, the images, viewed through four different optical filters on the web, show and prove how powerful the super telescope’s instruments are. Future instrument observations will reveal more information about these exoplanets than ever before.

“This is a transformative time, not just for Webb, but for astronomy in general,” said Sasha Hinckley, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter in the UK.

NASA explains that astronomers discovered the planet in 2017 using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and have already taken pictures.

While the new images may seem “low quality” to the non-expert, the difference now is that, like Webb, who “sees” different wavelengths of VLT, Astronomers can see new details about this giant gas that cannot be captured by ground-based telescopes.

(video: See the first images released by the James Webb Super Telescope.)

“I think that [aspecto] “The exciting thing about this is that we’re just getting started,” says Erin Carter, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the image analysis.

“There are many images of exoplanets coming that will shape our general understanding of physics, chemistry and morphology. We may also discover previously unknown planets.”