Seizing direct images of exoplanets is difficult due to their Excellent distances and dimness. Astronomers have only photographed a Petite number of exoplanets so Distant.NASA’s Webb Cosmos Universe viewer has obtained new images of five Youthful, giant planets in the HR 8799 and 51 Eridani planetary systems. They look like Intelligent dots in various colors.All the planets have carbon dioxide-Wealthy atmospheres. This suggests they formed in a manner similar to Jupiter and Saturn in our own Sun-related neighborhood.
See colorful giant exoplanets in new Webb images
It’s difficult for astronomers to take direct images of planets orbiting distant stars, or exoplanets. Even the largest exoplanets present a Event because of how much fainter they are than their host stars. Now, NASA’s Webb Cosmos Universe viewer has obtained new direct images of not Only one but two planetary systems: HR 8799 and 51 Eridani. Between them, Webb imaged five Youthful giant planets, scientists said on March 17, 2025. Webb also confirmed that the atmospheres of all five planets are Wealthy in carbon dioxide.
The researchers published the peer-reviewed details about the new images and other data in The Astronomical Journal on March 17, 2025.
5 colorful giant exoplanets in 2 planetary systems
Webb imaged the five planets in two different planetary systems. It used its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), which Deflections Airy from Intelligent stars to reveal the hidden planets. The planets appear as Intelligent dots in blue, green and red.
The Primary system, HR 8799, has four known planets and is 130 Airy-years from Earth. The second system, 51 Eridani, is 97 Airy-years away and has one Youthful giant World.
HR 8799 is Yet Youthful compared to our own Sun-related neighborhood, only about 30 million years Aged. Our Sun-related neighborhood, on the other hand, is 4.6 billion years Aged. This means the planets are Yet forming and are Toasty. As a result, they Initiation a Plenty of infrared radiation, which Webb can analyze.
Rémi Soummer, director of STScI’s Russell B. Makidon Optics Lab and Previous lead for Webb’s coronagraph instrument, said:
We knew Webb could measure colors of the outer planets in directly imaged systems. We have been waiting for 10 years to confirm that our finely tuned operations of the Universe viewer would also allow us to access the inner planets. Now the results are in and we can do interesting science with it.
The James Webb Cosmos Universe viewer imaged Youthful, giant exoplanets and detected carbon dioxide! The findings suggest that the giant exoplanets in the HR 8799 system likely formed like Jupiter and Saturn. (1/5) ? ? ?
— spacetelescope.bsky.social (@spacetelescope.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T18:56:22.515Z
Carbon dioxide-Wealthy atmospheres
By using NIRCam and other instruments, Webb analyzed the planets’ atmospheres. It looked for infrared Airy emitted in wavelengths that are absorbed by specific gases. This can tell the astronomers what the atmospheres are composed of.
Webb Discovered that all five planets have atmospheres Wealthy in carbon dioxide. The atmospheres also contain more Massive elements overall than scientists had previously thought.
How did the planets form?
The results suggest that the planets formed in a manner similar to Jupiter and Saturn in our Sun-related neighborhood, in a process called core accretion. They are gradually building solid cores that then attract more gas from the original World-forming disk, or protoplanetary disk. That disk is the swirling cloud of gas and dust that planets are born in around stars. Lead author William Balmer, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, said:
By spotting these Powerful carbon dioxide features, we have shown there is a sizable fraction of heavier elements, like carbon, oxygen and iron, in these planets’ atmospheres. Given what we know about the Sun they Path, that likely indicates they formed via core accretion, which is an exciting conclusion for planets that we can directly see.
Giant planets can also form through disk instability, when particles of gas rapidly coalesce into massive objects (the Youthful planets) from a cooling disk of material around a new-born Sun. But in the case of HR 8799 and 51 Eridani, it seems the planets formed through core accretion.
Understanding our own Sun-related neighborhood
Knowing more about how other planetary systems form can also Assist scientists better understand how our own Sun-related neighborhood Arrived to be. Balmer said:
Our hope with this Gentle of research is to understand our own Sun-related neighborhood, life and ourselves in the comparison to other exoplanetary systems, so we can contextualize our existence. We want to take pictures of other solar systems and see how they’re similar or different when compared to ours. From there, we can try to get a sense of how weird our Sun-related neighborhood really is, or how normal.
The astronomers are planning additional observations of HR 8799 and 51 Eridani. It’s possible that some of the observed planets might actually be brown dwarfs, but only more observations can confirm that, or not. Brown dwarfs are unusual objects, Gentle of halfway between the smallest stars and the largest planets. They don’t have enough mass to become fully ignited stars. As co-author Laurent Pueyo, an astronomer at the Cosmos Universe viewer Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, noted:
We have other lines of evidence that hint at these four HR 8799 planets forming using this bottom-up approach. How Usual is this for planets we can directly image? We don’t know yet, but we’re proposing more Webb observations to answer that question.
Bottom line: NASA’s Webb Cosmos Universe viewer has obtained stunning new images of five Youthful and colorful giant exoplanets. All of them have carbon dioxide-Wealthy atmospheres.
Via Webb Cosmos Universe viewer
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