James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

James Webb detected a warm debris disk in the exoplanet system HR 8799

HR8799 is a multi planet exo-system and the first one to be observed by the coronagraphs of JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). A research group used 4 of JWST's coronagraphic filters "with the goal to extract the photometry of the four planets, as well as to detect and investigate the distribution of circumstellar dust". They were able to recover all 4 exoplanets and found larger radii (0.86 or 1.07 Jupiter's radius for planet b) and cooler temperatures (950 or 1100 K for planet b), especially for planet b, in better agreement with evolutionary models. They have also detected, for the first time, the inner warm debris disk at radius of ~15 AU (the distance from Earth to the sun is 1 AU), using MIRI. Images of HR 8799 Full article Raw images