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Have you ever wanted to see an alien place? There is a planet near a distant star. The first ever picture of a planet around a distant star has just been returned by theJWST.
The new images show that the JWST will be a great tool for astronomy to improve their knowledge of exoplanets.
For people who have grown up watching Star Trek, Star Wars, and other science fiction, the images may be disappointing. There were no great swirling clouds. We just see a blob.
So why do these observations have astronomers buzzing with excitement? And what might we learn in the months and years to come?
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We have been through a great revolution over the past 30 years. We used to think that the Solar System was unique, but now we know that planets are all over the place.
At the time of writing, the number of known exoplanets is 5,084.
Most of the exoplanets are detected by indirect means. We can't see them directly because they're so close to their stars. We observe their host stars doing something unexpected, and then we see the presence of their unseen planetary companions.
Only a few alien worlds have been directly observed. HR 8799 is a system with four giant planets that have been imaged so frequently that a movie has been made about them.
Astronomers used the telescope to get the first direct images of an exoplanet, which was a star named HIP 65426.
It's unusual in a number of ways, and makes it an easy target for direct scans. It is 92 times farther from its host star than it is from the Sun. It's 14 billion kilometres from its star. The distance from the star in the sky makes it easier to see.
The world is thought to be several times the mass of Jupiter. It was previously found to be extremely hot, with the temperature at its cloud tops reaching over 1,200 degrees Celsius.
The planet's size and temperature make it bright.
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The light from the other side would overwhelm that from the other side.
Several "coronagraphs" are instruments that let the telescope block the light from a bright star to look for fainter objects next to it. It's similar to blocking the headlights of a car with your hand to see if your friend has come out.
The coronagraphs were used to take a series of pictures of HIP 65426b. The planet can be seen in each image because of a single bright offset from the star's location.
The images are not what you would expect from a science fiction novel. They show that the planet stood out against the dark background of space.
Astronomers around the globe are excited to see what comes next after the researchers who led the observations found that JWST is performing better than expected.
The mass of HIP 65426b was determined using their observations. The cloud tops are close to 1,400 degrees C, and the planet is slightly smaller than expected.
There is a picture of an alien world painted by these images.
The first signs of what JWST can do are seen in the observations of HIP 65426b.
The data shows that the JWST will be able to see smaller planets. Rather than being limited to planets larger than Jupiter, it should be able to see planets of similar size.
This is great. The rule of astronomy is that there are more small things than large things. Astronomers will be able to study more targets due to the fact that the JWST should be able to see smaller and fainter planets.
We will be able to learn a lot more about their atmospheres, thanks to the precision with which they were measured. The details of how the atmospheres change with time can be revealed with repeated observations.
Expect to see a lot of images of alien worlds in the future. Those pictures will change our understanding of planets around other stars.
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