![]() Along with the telescope's exceptional sensitivity, the planet has several features that make it easier to observe. To view it, scientists used two of Webb's cameras, several filters, and the telescope’s coronagraphs, tools which blocked out the light of the central star. The planet, called HIP 65426 b, was discovered in 2017. who led these observations, said in a statement in September. "This is a transformative moment, not only for Webb but also for astronomy generally," Sasha Hinkley, an astronomer at the University of Exeter in the U.K. In September, it captured its first direct image of an exoplanet. Most exoplanets are so far away that they can only be detected through a dip in the light of the star they are orbiting, when that planet passes in front of its host star. Still, only around two dozen of these have been imaged directly. Scientists discovered the first exoplanets in the 1990s, and today there are over 3,000 known worlds orbiting faraway stars. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA, A Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team, and A. The images were taken at different wavelengths of infrared light. Webb's first images of an alien world, HIP 65426b, are shown at the bottom of a wider image showing the planet’s host star. Webb's first direct image of an exoplanet Images like this one not only show Webb's capabilities as an infrared telescope, said Ward-Thompson, but could also help us understand how stars form, including our sun. ![]() ![]() As the radiation increases in wavelength, so do the wavelengths of the colors, with red parts of the image, such as the protostars, emitting radiation about six times the wavelength a human eye can see. The only visible parts of the image appear blue - those would look red to us. The image was created using different colors to represent mostly invisible infrared wavelengths, said Anton Koekemoer, a research astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore who put the image together using Webb’s data, told in October. "But gradually, as more and more material falls in, the middle becomes denser and denser, and then suddenly, it becomes so dense that the hydrogen burning switches on, and then suddenly their temperature jumps up to about 2 million degrees Celsius. "These young stars that we see in the image are not yet burning hydrogen," Derek Ward-Thompson, head of the school of natural sciences at the University of Central Lancashire in the U.K., told in October. Appearing as tiny red dots against the smoky backdrop of the pillars, these collections of dust and gas, each many times larger than our solar system, are stars being born. Now, Webb's infrared imaging has managed to capture it in the form of numerous protostars. But though the telescope, which detects mostly visible light, captured the structure’s impressive clouds, the "creation" happening within them was hidden. The Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula has long been one of the Hubble Space Telescope's most iconic images. The James Webb Space Telescope's view of the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula. "This data has already begun to reveal the atmospheric composition of planets hundreds of light-years from Earth in great detail, offering hints as to their ability to potentially support life as we know it." 2. "What's more, the telescope is capable of collecting enough light from astronomical objects - ranging from birthing stars to exoplanets - to reveal what they are made of and how they are moving through space," the editors of Science wrote. The journal named Webb as its Science Breakthrough of 2022, while the journal Nature chose Jane Rigby, Webb's operations project scientist, to include in their list, "10 people who helped shape science stories" list for 2022. ![]() ![]() "Within days of coming online in late June 2022, researchers began discovering thousands of new galaxies more distant and ancient than any previously documented - some perhaps more than 150 million years older than the oldest identified by Hubble," editors of the journal Science wrote in a statement. The infrared telescope will help us see almost every part of our universe in greater detail, including the most distant galaxies, allowing us a glimpse into the past. In mid-July, Webb released its stunning first images. The launch went off without a hitch, as did the numerous steps of the telescope's deployment in the following months. When Webb launched on Christmas Day of 2021, it was the culmination of decades of work by NASA scientists and engineers. (Image credit: NASA/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez) An illustration of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope fully unfolded in space. ![]()
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