{"id":14368,"date":"2025-06-25T20:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T20:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/14368\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T20:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T20:01:10","slug":"nasas-james-webb-space-telescope-has-captured-its-first-direct-image-of-an-exoplanet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/14368\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019S James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first direct image of an exoplanet"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA\u2019S James Webb Space Telescope has captured direct images<\/a> of a planet outside of our solar system, which is the first time it has accomplished such a feat. This is a very big deal because exoplanets don’t put out much light, so researchers typically discover new planets through indirect methods like keeping track of shadows as they pass across a host star.<\/p>\n

Webb, however, didn’t have to do all that. It has directly captured images of a planet called TWA 7 b<\/a>. Scientists believe the planet is around the mass of Saturn and is located 100 light years away from Earth.<\/p>\n

The planet is much further away from its star than Earth, so it has a wider orbital period that lasts several hundred years. The planetary system is thought to be around 6 million years old, so we are really getting a snapshot into the early stages of its development. Our sun is considered to be middle-aged and is around 4.6 billion years old.<\/p>\n

TWA 7 b is ten times smaller than any previous exoplanet to be directly observed with a telescope, according to The Guardian<\/a>. Typically, planets of this size can’t be seen by telescopes, as the light from the host star masks direct observation.<\/p>\n

The research team, led by Dr. Anne-Marie Lagrange, got around this by making a telescopic attachment that mimicked the results of a solar eclipse. This reduced much of the light emanating from the star to make it easier to observe surrounding objects.<\/p>\n

The process allowed the team to spot the planet, which appears as a bright source of light with a narrow ring of debris. Lagrange and her team do note that there’s still a “very small chance” the images show a background galaxy, but the evidence “strongly points” to the source being a previously undiscovered planet.<\/p>\n

The first exoplanet was first discovered in 1992<\/a>. Since that time, nearly 6,000 more<\/a> have been spotted. Again, the vast majority of these have not been captured with direct imaging.<\/p>\n

This is just the latest stunning discovery by our good friend James Webb. It recently captured a cosmic phenomenon<\/a> called an “Einstein Ring,” which is when light from one galaxy is bent around the mass of another. Last year, the telescope found the most distant galaxy ever observed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019S James Webb Space Telescope has captured direct images of a planet outside of our solar system, which…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14826,14824,14823,916,50,159,14825,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-14368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-exoplanet","9":"tag-james-webb","10":"tag-james-webb-telescope","11":"tag-nasa","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-tomorrow","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114745788628677643","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}