←back to thread

JWST reveals its first direct image discovery of an exoplanet

(www.smithsonianmag.com)
342 points divbzero | 2 comments | 27 Jun 25 17:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.552s | source
Show context
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.

replies(17): >>44401110 #>>44401184 #>>44401253 #>>44401265 #>>44401398 #>>44402344 #>>44402398 #>>44402585 #>>44402661 #>>44402689 #>>44402874 #>>44403215 #>>44403439 #>>44403929 #>>44403949 #>>44404611 #>>44408076 #
1. perlgeek ◴[28 Jun 25 09:43 UTC] No.44403439[source]▶
It would be really cool to have an array of space-based telescopes spaced out evenly in the Earth's orbit around the sun, and use each as relay for the others that cannot directly communicate with Earth, because the path is blocked by the Sun.

Then you could do observations outside the solar system's orbital plane with a 2 AU synthetic aperture. And maybe even do double duty as a gravitational wave observatory.

(And yes, this is currently more science fiction than science, but it's at least plausible that we can build such a thing one day).

replies(1): >>44410496 #
2. alex_young ◴[29 Jun 25 05:05 UTC] No.44410496[source]▶
If you can put an ugly sports car in an earth / mars orbit, surely you can put a few telescopes in some large orbit and figure out a timing source. Seems very much inside the realm of the possible.