Webb Telescope Images New Planet — What It Means For Earth 2.0 Search
Image of the disk around the star TWA 7 recorded using ESO's Very Large Telescope's SPHERE ... More instrument, with image captured with JWST's MIRI instrument overlayed. A.-M. Lagrange and al. - Evidence for a sub-jovian planet in the young TWA7 disk, 2025
Dubbed TWA 7b, the exoplanet — defined as a planet that orbits a star other than the sun — was found in a disk of debris (which scientists call a protoplanetary disk) around a star called TWA 7. The planet is 10 times lighter than those previously captured in images.
TWA 7 is a small red dwarf star just 111 light-years from the solar system in the Southern Hemisphere constellation Antlia. It has long been known to have three rings around it that could have planets forming within them.
It's the first confirmed detection of a planet embedded in a debris disk using the Webb Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument, which provides far greater sensitivity than previous instruments.
It comes just a week after Webb's Near-Infrared Camera was used to directly image another cold exoplanet called 14 Herculis c. About seven times the mass of Jupiter, it was found 60 light-years from the solar system in the constellation Hercules.
TWA 7b was found using MIRI's coronagraph instrument, which places a disk over a star to block its light, creating an artificial eclipse that enables planets to show up around it. Exoplanets are typically found using the transit method, whereby astronomers record slight dips in the brightness of a distant star caused by a planet transiting across it. It's then possible to calculate the size of the planet, how far away it is from the star and study the starlight shining through the planet's atmosphere. If that method relies purely on a lucky line of sight, so does the discovery of TWA 7b. The TWA 7 star system is seen pole-on, an ideal vantage point that had allowed earlier observations to reveal its three-ring debris disk. Direct imaging, especially of low-mass planets, is notoriously difficult due to the overwhelming brightness of host stars. A paper about the discovery was published in Nature today by an international team of scientists.
In this 2020 image from the Gemini South telescope in Chile, the circumstellar disk around star TWA ... More 7 can be seen. International Gemini Observatory
At about a third of the mass of Jupiter — about the same as Saturn's, or about 100 times the mass of Earth — TWA 7b is the lowest-mass exoplanet ever directly imaged. It demonstrates JWST's power to detect much smaller and colder planets than previously possible using the MIRI instrument's coronagraph to directly image stars. Researchers believe that with continued use of advanced coronagraphs, even Earth-sized planets could one day be imaged directly. Efforts are already underway to identify the next most promising targets. Creating 'fake' Eclipses In Space
The European Space Agency last week published the first images of an artificial total solar eclipse created in Earth orbit by its Proba-3 mission. It features two satellites that fly in formation 492 feet (150 meters) apart with millimeter precision, with one using a 1.4-meter-diameter disk that occults the sun, casting a shadow on another with a telescope and a coronagraph. Creating a total solar eclipse for six hours in every 19.6-hour orbit should allow scientists to study the sun's corona — its hotter outer atmosphere — which is only visible during a total solar eclipse. Forbes History Made As Webb Telescope Finds 44 Stars Near Big Bang — Here's How It Did It By Jamie Carter Forbes Webb Telescope Photographs 'Strange' Cold Planet Around Nearby Star By Jamie Carter Forbes In Photos: First Ever 'Fake' Total Solar Eclipse Created In Space By Jamie Carter
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gizmodo
an hour ago
- Gizmodo
Astronomers Discover a Previously Hidden Moon Orbiting Uranus
Astronomers spotted a never-before-seen, bite-sized moon orbiting Uranus, bringing the ice giant's follower count to 29. The moon is so small and faint—well below the detection threshold of NASA's Voyager 2 probe—that scientists believe Uranus may host many more undiscovered, tiny moons. The moon, provisionally named S/2025 U1, first entered the view of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on February 2, 2025. Further imaging led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) shows that it sits at the edge of Uranus's inner rings, about 35,000 miles (56,000 kilometers) from its center in the planet's equatorial plane. Perhaps the most striking aspect of S/2025 U1 is its tiny size. Assuming it has a similar reflectivity to Uranus's other moons, the object measures only about 6 miles (10 kilometers) across—roughly a quarter the length of a marathon. 'It's a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft didn't see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago,' said Maryame El Moutamid, an SwRI scientist, in a NASA statement. 'No other planet has as many small inner moons as Uranus, and their complex interrelationships with the rings hint at a chaotic history that blurs the boundary between a ring system and a system of moons,' added Matthew Tiscareno of the SETI Institute, who participated in the discovery. 'Looking forward, the discovery of this moon underscores how modern astronomy continues to build upon the legacy of missions like Voyager 2, which flew past Uranus on Jan. 24, 1986, and gave humanity its first close-up look at this mysterious world,' said El Moutamid. 'Now, nearly four decades later, the James Webb Space Telescope is pushing that frontier even farther.' Not much is known about the moon's exact composition, but the fact such a small object was hiding in orbit hints at the presence of even more moons like it, Tiscareno added. For the time being, the team is looking into the archives to find a suitable name for the moon, whose names mostly come from Shakespearean characters. Hopefully, we'll soon hear about the new name, along with more details about this latest addition to the Uranus family.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
French firm teams up with JetZero on hydrogen-powered flight
By Tim Hepher PARIS (Reuters) -A French technology startup unveiled plans on Wednesday to work with clean-aircraft venture JetZero to explore a potential hydrogen-powered variant of its futuristic all-wing design. The move by SHZ Advanced Technologies is likely to rekindle a debate over the potential for zero-emission flight, six months after Europe's Airbus put the brakes on plans to develop the world's first hydrogen-powered airliner. California-based JetZero aims to challenge the traditional duopoly of Airbus and Boeing by developing a so-called blended wing-body aircraft, which it claims will be able to cut fuel consumption - and therefore carbon emissions - in half. JetZero and SHZ now plan to work together under a NASA research programme to design systems capable of storing and distributing liquid hydrogen fuel, which could eliminate carbon emissions altogether and evolve into a variant of JetZero's Z4. Hydrogen is prized for its carbon-free emissions and high energy related to mass, which makes it lighter than normal fuel. However, it also takes up much more volume and must be cooled to -253 degrees Celsius, making storage a significant challenge. JetZero's blended wing-body design features a V-shaped fuselage that acts as a wing and reduces friction in the air, rather than the familiar wings and cylindrical fuselage. "Due to the wider fuselage, the airframe is far more compatible with (liquid hydrogen) fuel tanks without sacrificing passenger seating, as a 'tube and wing' airplane would," SHZ Advanced Technologies said on Wednesday. Airbus said in February it was slowing down efforts to produce a hydrogen-powered regional plane and dropped a target date of 2035, blaming a lack of supporting infrastructure. Boeing, by contrast, has been cool on the commercial viability of hydrogen flight altogether. The concept of a blended wing-body design has been around since the 1940s and led to the U.S. B-2 bomber, as well as the X-48 research project between Boeing and NASA some 18 years ago. JetZero is revisiting such designs as the aviation industry struggles to meet a target of net-zero emissions by 2050. Airbus has argued that combining such radical changes to the shape of a plane with an entirely new propulsion system would be too ambitious, and is focusing instead on hydrogen-based fuel cells inside a normal tubular aircraft configuration. But SHZ Advanced Technologies' co-founder Eric Schulz - a former senior executive at Rolls-Royce and Airbus - said JetZero would approach the task in two phases with the initial focus on a conventionally powered all-wing plane. Any hydrogen-based variant would come in a second step, he told Reuters. The French firm says it has developed hydrogen tanks that save space by avoiding the usual cylindrical shape needed for pressurised vessels and can fit more easily into the flowing contours of the Z4's fuselage. JetZero, whose backers include United Airlines, said in June it was on track to fly a full-scale prototype of the revolutionary 250-passenger airplane in 2027. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
James Webb Spots Mysterious Object Orbiting Uranus
Circle Strafe NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has spotted a tiny moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the number of the planet's known satellites to 29. In early February, the space observatory's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) caught the minuscule and still-unnamed object orbiting the gas giant at a distance of 35,000 miles. "It's a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft didn't see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago," said Southwest Research Institute lead scientist Maryame El Moutamid in a NASA statement. Scientists estimate the diminutive world is just six miles in diameter, which could explain why even our most sensitive equipment has missed it until now. "No other planet has as many small inner moons as Uranus, and their complex inter-relationships with the rings hint at a chaotic history that blurs the boundary between a ring system and a system of moons," said SETI Institute researcher and research team member Matthew Tiscareno. "Moreover, the new moon is smaller and much fainter than the smallest of the previously known inner moons, making it likely that even more complexity remains to be discovered." Ring Cycle Its almost perfectly circular orbit has led the scientists to conclude that it must have formed somewhere near its current location. Uranus' 29 moons range significantly in size, with the largest, Titania, measuring 981 miles in diameter, making it the eighth-largest moon in the solar system. Before Voyager 2 visited Uranus, unveiling almost a dozen new moons, Miranda was considered the smallest, measuring 290 miles in diameter. Scientists are still debating how Uranus' moons came to be. Existing theories include material sticking together in the planet's large accretion disk over time, or possibly a giant impact that knocked material loose. At the time of Voyager 2's visit, Uranus had 15 known moons. Additional observations since then, including help from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, have revealed more than a dozen new ones, which tend to be significantly smaller. That makes the latest discovery all the more impressive, considering the newly spotted moon is only a fraction of the size of Miranda. "It's a tiny object right next to a very, very bright object," SETI Institute researcher and team member Mark Showalter told New Scientist. "It's like staring into the headlight of a car and trying to look at a fly." "The James Webb telescope is an extraordinary instrument that is vastly more sensitive than any other telescope that has ever existed, frankly," he added. More on Uranus: Scientists Say That Uranus Appears to Have a Girlfriend Solve the daily Crossword
