James Webb snaps its first image of an exoplanet

Image and info courtesy of NASA

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured its first direct image of a planet outside of our solar system, following in the footsteps of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) before it.

The exoplanet HIP 65426 b, originally discovered in 2017 by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT), was photographed by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) through various filters, a task made easier due to the exoplanet being about 100 times more distant from its star than Earth is to the Sun.

“Obtaining this image felt like digging for space treasure,” UC postdoctoral researcher Aaryn Carter said referring to how, as the person in charge of analyzing the images, it still took large amounts of image processing to unveil HIP 65426 b despite the planet's distance from its star and Webb's advanced instruments.

JWST's current progress can be tracked via NASA's "Where is Webb" page.