The Webb telescope took its first direct image of an exoplanet, known as HIP 65426b, an image not only special to Webb, but also of astronomy, as Webb’s exoplanet image is a potential source for future observations, There are good signs. Webb used the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to capture HIP 65426, both of which are equipped with coronagraphs, small sets of masks that block starlight,and the web is thus able to take direct images of exoplanets.
The ways in which Webb’s different instruments capture the light cause HIP 65426b images to differ, e.g. purple shows the NIRCAM instrument’s view at 3.00 micrometers, blue shows the NIRCAM instrument’s view at 4.44 micrometers, yellow shows the MIRI instrument’s view shows, the view of the MIRI instrument at 11.4 µm and red at 15.5 µm. Webb’s exoplanet HIP 65426 b image shows in different bands of infrared light, HIP 65426 b is about six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter, where our Earth is 4.5 billion years old, while HIP 65426 is about 20 million years older than Earth.
Sasha Hinckley, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, who has led these observations with a large international collaboration, says Hinckley says this is a great opportunity not only for Webb, but for astronomy as well. Hinckley adds that it was really impressive, how well Webb’s coronagraphs worked to suppress the host star’s light, making it challenging to take direct images of any of the coronagraph exoplanets, that is, because the stars Its light is much brighter than that of the planets, and HIP 65426 b is also a planet that appears 10,000 times dimmer in the near-infrared than its host star.
In 2017, a team of astronomers used the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, and discovered the planet HIP 65426b, and took images of the planet using short-infrared wavelengths of light. Webb will reveal new details over its lifetime at longer infrared wavelengths that are not detectable by ground-based telescopes due to the intrinsic infrared brightness of Earth’s atmosphere.
