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JWST reveals its first direct image discovery of an exoplanet

(www.smithsonianmag.com)
342 points divbzero | 1 comments | 27 Jun 25 17:44 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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GMoromisato ◴[27 Jun 25 23:00 UTC] No.44401068[source]▶
In case anyone is wondering, we are (sadly) very far from getting an image of this planet (or any extra-solar planet) that is more than 1 pixel across.

At 110 light-years distance you would need a telescope ~450 kilometers across to image this planet at 100x100 pixel resolution--about the size of a small icon. That is a physical limit based on the wavelength of light.

The best we could do is build a space-based optical interferometer with two nodes 450 kilometers apart, but synchronized to 1 wavelength. That's a really tough engineering challenge.

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fsckboy ◴[28 Jun 25 06:26 UTC] No.44402661[source]▶
>In case anyone is wondering, we are (sadly) very far from getting an image of this planet (or any extra-solar planet) that is more than 1 pixel across.

the image on the linked website is more than 1 pixel across: what are you saying? it's false/fake?

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1. quailfarmer ◴[28 Jun 25 06:56 UTC] No.44402789[source]▶
The resolution of the image (the ability to resolve two points) is greater than the size of the planet, thus it appears as a point spread function, no detail can be resolved.