Nasa Webb’s first image of a planet outside of our solar system goes viral

James Webb Space Telescope's first image of a planet outside of our solar system was posted by Nasa on Instagram.

Astronomers have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope for the first time to capture a direct image of a planet which is outside our solar system. Shared on Instagram, a post about this incredible incident has gone viral and left people stunned.

Nasa Webb’s first image of a planet outside of our solar system shared on Instagram. (Instagram/@nasa)

“Baby’s first exoplanet capture,” Nasa wrote at the beginning of the post and then explained more about the amazing capture. “@NASAWebb captured its first image of a planet outside of our solar system—a preview of future observations that will reveal more about exoplanets,” they added.

“While this is not the first direct image of an exoplanet taken from space, HIP 65426 b points the way forward for Webb’s exoplanet exploration. These images show the exoplanet in different bands of infrared light, as seen from Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared instrument (MIRI). They look different because of the ways different instruments capture light. A set of masks within each instrument, called a coronagraph, blocks out the host star’s light so that the planet can be seen. The small white star in each image marks the location of the exoplanet’s host star, which has been subtracted using the coronagraphs and image processing,” they explained.