• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

JWST Snaps Its First Image Of An Exoplanet – And It’s A Very Weird World

September 1, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

Astronomers report the first image of an exoplanet captured by JWST, and it’s a very weird world. The ground-breaking telescope is said to have exceeded expected performances by a factor of 10. It’s already demonstrated that it can study exoplanets’ atmospheres as they pass in front of their stars, and now it’s shown it can directly image exoplanets. 

The world in question is called HIP 65426b and it’s truly puzzling. Previous claims said it shouldn’t exist as it doesn’t fit our models of exoplanets (planets outside the Solar System), so observations of it are crucial to help astronomers develop better ones. 

Advertisement

Firstly, it orbits a very young star that has a mass twice our Sun and spins very fast on its axis. It takes just over three hours for a full rotation compared to the 28 days of our Sun. That’s 150 times faster. Also, despite being a star between 15 and 20 million years old it has no disk around it from which planets can form. And that’s just the first part of the mystery. 

HIP 65426b is located about 92 AU from its star, with 1 AU (astronomical unit) being the Earth-Sun distance. That’s three times further out than Neptune. And yet the planet, which is now estimated to weigh about seven times that of Jupiter, is hot with a temperature of about 1,000°C (1,800°F).

A proposed scenario is that the planet formed with siblings closer to the star, quickly making the disk disappear, and then through a gravitational tug-of-war, it ended up here and the siblings were lost, An alternative scenario sees the star and the planet forming together and the star hoarding most of the material, stopping the planet from getting any bigger and turning into a brown dwarf or a star.

Advertisement

A paper on this first-ever image of an exoplanet from JWST has been submitted to the AAS journal and is currently available to read on the online repository ArXiv. In infrared, the wavelength that JWST uses, the planet is between 1,000 (near infrared) to 100 (mid-infrared) times fainter than its star. So it is incredible that the telescope can see it so clearly.

And while this study doesn’t have a definite answer about the origin of this peculiar world, it shows what an asset JWST will be for studying exoplanets. Given the right star, the team believes that a planet smaller than Saturn and with a similar orbit should be visible to the space telescope.

If you don’t think HIP 65426b is a great name for such an unusual planet, worry not. The International Astronomical Union is currently asking members of the public to submit proposals for new names for this and many other worlds as we write. 

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Indian farmers stage protest outside Delhi against farm laws
  2. Global reinsurance rates to keep rising next year – ratings agencies
  3. Expelled from Texas, returned Haitians lament lost American dream
  4. Air New Zealand to require COVID-19 vaccination for international travelers

Source Link: JWST Snaps Its First Image Of An Exoplanet – And It’s A Very Weird World

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • There Are 2-Billion-Year-Old “Millennium Rocks” In A Suburb, Hundreds Of Miles From Their Primeval Home
  • “That’s A Hellfire Missile Smacking Into That UFO”: Strange Video Emerges From US UAP Hearing
  • In 40,000 Years, Voyager 1 Will Have A Close Encounter With Gliese 445
  • Abnormally Long Gamma Ray Burst Unlike Anything We’ve Seen Before Baffles Astronomers
  • Critically Endangered Shark Meat Is Being Sold In US Stores For As Little As $2.99
  • Infectious Mouth Bacteria Lurking In Artery Plaques Could Be Behind Some Heart Attacks
  • What Would You Reach If You Kept Digging Under Antarctica?
  • First Visible Time Crystals Ever Made Have Astonishing Complexity And Practical Potential
  • “Something Undeniably Special”: The Chi Cygnids, A New Five-Yearly Meteor Shower, Peak This Month
  • A 200-Meter-Tall Event We Didn’t See Sent Signals Through The Earth For Nine Whole Days
  • Why Are So Many Volcanoes Underwater?
  • In 1977, A Hybrid Was Born In A Zoo. What It Taught Us Could Save One Of The Planet’s Most Endangered Species
  • How To Park A Dangerous Asteroid So It Doesn’t Bite You Later
  • New Study Finds Evidence For What Every Parent Knows About Bluey
  • New Breakthrough Takes Plastic Garbage And Turns It Into Tool For Carbon Capture
  • NASA To Hold Press Conference About New Perseverance Rover Discovery Tomorrow
  • Strange Halos Have Formed Around Barrels Of Chemicals Dumped Off LA’s Coast Over 50 Years Ago
  • As We Grow Older, Our Music Taste Appears To Narrow To Fewer Songs
  • Stinky Seaweed Blob On Florida Beaches Thwarts Baby Sea Turtles’ Dash To The Ocean
  • NASA Is Set To Lock Up Four Volunteers For 378-Day Mars Simulation Study
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version