Nasa reveals mind-blowing image of distant planet spotted by James Webb Space Telescope in major first

THE JAMES Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of a distant planet in a first for the world's top space observatory.

Photographing distant planets is extremely difficult because light from their host star will pollute the images.

To solve this, the James Webb Space Telescope is fitted with instruments called coronographs for blocking starlight.

Using the deep space imaging technology, Nasa snapped photos of HIP 65426 b, an exoplanet six to 12 times the size of Jupiter.

“Obtaining this image felt like digging for space treasure,” said Aarynn Carte, a postdoctural researcher at University of Santa Cruz and leader of the team that analyzed the photos.

HIP 65426 b is a good candidate for imaging because it is very far from its host star - about 100 time farther than Earth is from our Sun.

Still, the light initially flooded the image because HIP 65426 b is 10,000 times fainter than its host star, a Nasa blog explains.

“At first all I could see was light from the star, but with careful image processing I was able to remove that light and uncover the planet,” Carte continued.

“It was really impressive how well the Webb coronagraphs worked to suppress the light of the host star,” said Sasha Hinkley, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter and observation team leader.

In a thread on Twitter, Nasa makes note that the the new images of the exoplanet may look like glitchy specks to the average person.

"Fun fact: if we sent a telescope to the nearest exoplanet traveling at the same rate as @NASAVoyager (17.3 km/sec), it would take 73,000 years to reach it!" Nasa wrote.

"And that is why exoplanet imagery from nearby Earth shows just dots of light."

HIP 65426 b was first discovered in 2017 using a ground-based telescope in Chile.

The James Webb Space Telescope is better situated to take high-resolution pictures of distant space because above the Earth's atmosphere, parked one million miles away from the surface.

But it's not the first time an orbital telescope has photographed an exoplanet.

That distinction belongs to the Hubble Space Telescope, which spotted the exoplanet HD 209458 b in 2000.

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