NASA’s Webb Identifies Its First Exoplanet - And It’s the Size of Earth | #SHORTS #NASA #Exoplanet

A team led by researchers at Johns Hopkins APL, has confirmed the discovery of an exoplanet — a planet orbiting another star — by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. 🔵 🔭

“I think rocky exoplanets are the new frontier with JWST,” said APL astrophysicist Kevin Stevenson, a co-lead on the study. “Just as NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes paved a new field with the discovery of hot, Jupiter-sized exoplanets, JWST is going to open a whole new avenue of research into smaller, rocky worlds that were once undetectable from Earth.”

Webb’s Near Infrared Spectrograph clearly confirmed the planet after two observations last summer of it transiting, or passing in front of its star. Taking just two Earth-days to orbit its red dwarf star, LHS 475b is closer to its star than any planet in our solar system. Such proximity to the Sun would easily boil and blow off any atmosphere, but because the temperature of LHS 475b’s star is less than half that of the Sun, the researchers project the planet could still have an atmosphere.

The researchers presented their finding to media on Jan. 11 at the annual conference of the American Astronomical Society.