stsci_2025-114b March 17th, 2025
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI
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.
Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute
Image Source: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-114
Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA
Image Use Policy: https://www.stsci.edu/copyright
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
Providers | Sign In