<\/p>\n
The JWST\u2019s size and sensitivity enabled it to collect more light from this planet than any previous observatory has obtained. (Its photo looks grainier than SPHERE\u2019s only because the JWST observes longer, infrared wavelengths.) This allowed Hinkley, Biller and their team to refine the estimate of the planet\u2019s mass, which they peg at about seven Jupiter masses, less than SPHERE\u2019s estimate of about 10. Their results also help nail down the planet\u2019s radius, which is 1.4 times that of Jupiter. Simple models of planetary evolution can\u2019t easily explain this world\u2019s combination of properties; Carter noted that the precise new data will allow scientists to test models against each other and \u201ctighten our understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
HIP 65426 b\u2019s surface features aren\u2019t visible in the image, but Biller said it would \u201cprobably look banded\u201d like Jupiter, with belts caused by variations in temperature and composition, and might have spots in its atmosphere caused by storms or vortices.<\/p>\n
The giant planet is inhospitable to life as we know it, but it represents a class of large planets that scientists are eager to learn more about. Jupiter probably played a key role in sculpting our solar system, perhaps enabling life on Earth to take hold. \u201cIt\u2019d be nice to know if that works in other solar systems,\u201d said Macintosh.<\/p>\n The Webb telescope\u2019s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) each captured views of the planet HIP 65426 b at multiple infrared wavelengths, providing details that astronomers could use to infer the planet\u2019s properties. The white stars mark the location of the host star HIP 65426, which has been subtracted using coronagraphs and image processing, while the bar shapes in the two NIRCam images are artifacts of the optics, not objects in the scene.<\/span>Illlustration: NASA\/ESA\/CSA, A Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team, and A. Pagan (STScI)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Because the JWST is so much more stable than expected, scientists say it should be able to photograph smaller exoplanets than anticipated\u2014perhaps as small as a third of Jupiter\u2019s mass. \u201cWe could image things like Neptune and Uranus that we\u2019ve never directly imaged before,\u201d said Emily Rickman, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, which operates the JWST.<\/p>\n Now that the JWST\u2019s coronagraph has passed its road test, Hinkley thinks astronomers will be lining up to use it to take otherworldly photos. He expects to see \u201cdefinitely dozens\u201d by the end of the telescope\u2019s lifetime. \u201cI hope it\u2019s more like hundreds.\u201d<\/p>\n Peeking in Distant Skies<\/p>\n In addition to the exoplanet photo, Hinkley\u2019s team will announce in the coming days that they have discovered an array of molecules in the atmosphere of a suspected brown dwarf\u2014sometimes known as a \u201cfailed star\u201d\u2014orbiting a companion star. Almost 20 times heavier than Jupiter, the object has a mass just below the threshold where fusion could begin in its core.<\/p>\n Using an instrument on the JWST that picks apart the light\u2019s frequencies, a process called spectroscopy, the scientists found water, methane, carbon dioxide and sodium, all revealed at an unprecedented level of detail. They also detected smokelike clouds of silica in the candidate brown dwarf\u2019s atmosphere, something hinted at before in such objects but never established. \u201cIn my mind this is the greatest spectrum ever obtained of a substellar companion,\u201d said Hinkley. \u201cWe\u2019ve never seen anything like it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The JWST\u2019s size and sensitivity enabled it to collect more light from this planet than any previous observatory has obtained. (Its photo looks grainier than SPHERE\u2019s only because the JWST observes longer, infrared wavelengths.) This allowed Hinkley, Biller and their team to refine the estimate of the planet\u2019s mass, which they peg at about seven […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1202234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1202233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}