51 Eridani (NIRCam Image)
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NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Caption
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured this image of Eridani 51 b, a cool, young exoplanet that orbits 890 million miles from its star, similar to Saturn’s orbit in our solar system. The observations detected the planet is rich in carbon dioxide, providing strong evidence that the planet formed much like Jupiter and Saturn, by slowly building a solid core that attracted gas from within a protoplanetary disk.
The 51 Eridani system is 97 light-years from Earth. This image includes filters representing 4.1-micron light as red.
Credits
Image
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Laurent Pueyo (STScI), William Balmer (JHU), Marshall Perrin (STScI)