The James Webb Space Telescope has just delivered its first direct image of a planet orbiting a distant star.
The gas giant's faint glow was captured near a young star around 350 light-years away, serving as a demonstration of the telescope's abilities to directly observe exoplanets – a technically difficult task, but one that gives us a different tool for the study of alien worlds to the indirect methods most commonly used.of the University of Exeter in the UK,"not only for Webb but also for astronomy generally.
Likewise, an exoplanet's presence will exert a miniscule gravitational pull on its star, which we can detect as regular changes in the starlight's wavelength. Both of these techniques work best for exoplanets that are very close to their star. An exoplanet can be many magnitudes dimmer than the halo of light diffracting from the star they orbit; yet it's the best tool we have for characterizing exoplanets that orbit their stars at wide separations, with very long multi-year orbits.