New way to filter starlight reveals a known planet in Webb data

Astronomers reprocessed existing James Webb Space Telescope observations to obtain the first image of the known giant planet 51 Eridani b at a wavelength of 4.3 micrometres. The study by Rodrigo Ferrer-Chavez and colleagues was published online in Nature on November 4. [evidence-1] [evidence-2]

The team’s method, called FLIP, models how light travels through the telescope and accounts for tiny changes in its optics. That helps remove the residual glare that can hide a planet’s signal. The team reported a two- to 15-fold gain in sensitivity over standard processing in the observations it tested. The 4.3-micrometre band is useful for studying planetary atmospheres because carbon dioxide absorbs infrared light there. [evidence-1] [evidence-2]