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JWST reveals its first direct image discovery of an exoplanet

(www.smithsonianmag.com)
344 points divbzero | 1 comments | 27 Jun 25 17:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.218s | 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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1. whitehexagon ◴[28 Jun 25 08:50 UTC] No.44403215[source]▶
Even a single pixel in the IR range is pretty cool, but something inside me wants the RGB pixel color in visible light range.

Is that a case of un redshifting this pixel, or needing the optical inferometer you mentioned with multiple single frequency filters.

Or something new? like a LHC style accelerator, or space based rail gun, to fire off a continuous stream of tiny cube sats towards the target, and using the stream itself as a comms channel back.

Yeah I know, this planet is burning, and all that effort for a RGB wallpaper seems crazy, but 'space stuff' also brings knowledge and hope.