JWST reveals its first direct image discovery of an exoplanet

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.

We can do better than that! Using the Sun as a gravitation lens[1], and a probe at a focal point of 542 AU, we could get 25km scale surface resolution on a planet 98 ly away. [2] This would be an immense and time-consuming endeavor, but does seem to be within humanity's current technological capabilities.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens

2. https://www.nasa.gov/general/direct-multipixel-imaging-and-s...

For scale, Voyager 1 is about 167 AU away.

You’re never going to break into popular science reporting with that sort of attitude. If you are going to do the scale of a small thing, you have to compare it to the size of a banana or the width of a hair if it’s very small. For larger things, “football pitches” are the standard, although “blue whales” and “double-decker busses” are also acceptable units in some circumstances.

So, for scale, Voyager 1 is about 2.5 x 10^11 regulation football pitches away although they vary in size so it could be anywhere between 2.08 x 10^11 and 2.8 x 10^11. Now, see how much more relatable that is for a common person?

Smoots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot

We should definitely use TeraSmoots more as an astronomically unit.