NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope took its first direct image of an exoplanet, a star outside our Solar System. Exoplanet HIP 65425 b is a gas giant orbiting an A-type star: it is regarding nine times larger than Jupiter and regarding 355 light-years from Earth.
NASA reported a new feat of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): obtaining its first portrait of an exoplanet or extrasolar world. Webb captured the faint glow of a gas giant called HIP 65425 b, recorded near a young star regarding 350 light-years distant from our planet.
The exoplanet portrayed by Webb has between 6 and 12 times the mass of Jupiter and is young compared to Earth: it is between 15 and 20 million years old, when our planet is 4.5 billion years old. Furthermore, it takes 630 years to complete one orbit around its star and reaches extreme temperatures of 900 degrees Celsius.
While this alien world has virtually no chance of being habitable, the data from these observations show the potential for JWST to study exoplanets, some of which might support life.
According to a post on the official NASA blog, astronomers believe it is a strong demonstration of the telescope’s abilities to observe exoplanets directly, international agencies report.
Undoubtedly, it is a superior tool for the study of distant worlds with respect to the indirect methods most used today, such as the planetary transit method, which measures the dimming of a star’s brightness when a planet passes between it and the Earth. .
Although this “super-Jupiter” will not provide too many advances in terms of the registration of some form of extraterrestrial life, it will serve as a spearhead to test the observation system used by the JWST, to later apply it to extrasolar worlds with characteristics more similar to the Earth or located in areas with better habitability conditions.
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