Institutional development · Research, innovation and assessment · United States
Digital twin of Webb telescope camera boosts exoplanet detection up to 15-fold, Caltech says
Caltech reports that researchers modelled the James Webb Space Telescope's near-infrared camera to remove stellar glare from existing images, detecting known planets two to 15 times more sensitively than standard techniques.
Why it matters: Astronomers working with existing James Webb Space Telescope images have a reported method that detects known planets two to 15 times more sensitively than standard techniques.
Caltech reported that a team of researchers built a 'digital twin' of the James Webb Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to model stellar glare and remove starlight from existing images.
According to Caltech, the method improves detection of known planets with sensitivity two to 15 times better than standard techniques.
Caltech professor Katie Bouman, a co-author of a Nature paper, said even tiny telescope imperfections make it hard to separate a planet's faint light from its star's glare.
Editor’s view
Scott James, Research and Innovation Editor
Caltech says the team's method strips stellar light from existing Webb telescope images to find concealed worlds, with a sensitivity gain of two to 15 times over standard techniques for known planets.
