James Webb Telescope takes first direct image of exoplanet

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first direct image of a planet outside our solar system, TWA 7 b. This is a significant achievement, as exoplanets are extremely faint and are usually detected indirectly, such as by analyzing the eclipse of a star when a planet passes in front of it. The research is published in the journal Nature.

TWA 7 b is located about 100 light-years from Earth. Researchers estimate that its mass is comparable to that of Saturn. The planet orbits its star at a much greater distance than Earth orbits the Sun, and one revolution takes several hundred years. The age of the system is only about 6 million years, which allows scientists to study the early stages of planet formation.

It is the smallest exoplanet ever directly imaged - ten times smaller than previous objects seen in the images. The team, led by Dr Anne-Marie Lagrange, managed to reduce the glare from the star by creating special equipment that simulates the effect of an eclipse. This allowed the planet and its ring of debris to be detected.

The researchers suggest that the observations could also indicate a distant galaxy, but the data collected suggests that the object is indeed an exoplanet.