NASA releases pictures of exoplanet , It might look like a couple of colourful smudges but it could be the next step in finding habitable planets outside our own.
NASA has released the first picture of HIP 65426 b, an exoplanet that’s six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter. It marks the first time that astronomers have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system. The image — as seen through four different light filters shows how Webb’s powerful infrared gaze can easily capture worlds beyond our solar system, pointing the way to future observations that will reveal more information than ever before about pictures of exoplanet. It is young as planets go about 15 to 20 million years old compared to our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth. The exoplanet is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and could not be habitable, according to University of Exeter’s associate professor of physics and astronomy, Sasha Hinkley, who led observations with international collaborators.
“This is a transformative moment, not only for Webb but also for astronomy generally,” Dr Hinkley said. All of the planets in our solar system revolve around the Sun. An exoplanet is any planet that orbits around stars other than the Sun. Exoplanets are extremely hard to see with telescopes because they become hidden by the bright glare of the stars they move around. The Webb telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are both equipped with coronagraphs, which are sets of tiny masks that block out starlight, enabling it to take direct pictures of exoplanet such as this one. Exoplanets also really far away from us. HIP 65426 b is 385 light-years away from Earth, in the Centaurus constellation, one of the largest and brightest constellations in the southern sky. Since HIP 65426 b is about 100 times farther from its host star than Earth is from the Sun, it is sufficiently distant from the star that the Webb telescope can easily separate the planet from the star in the image.
Source: This news is originally published by abc