A lost treasure in James Webb's memory a planet emerging from the glare of its star

A giant planet was hidden in images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope two years ago, but scientists couldn't see it because of the glare from its bright star. Its discovery in those images didn't require a more powerful telescope or new observations, but rather an innovative mathematical method that removed the distracting light, revealing an object that had been present in the data all along.

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This method was developed by a team from Northwestern University in the United States, led by astronomer Rodrigo Ferrer Chavez, and its results were published in the journal "Nature" on November 4, 2026.

The planet is 51 Eridani b, a gas giant previously discovered using ground-based telescopes, but it remained invisible in one of the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared images. The team succeeded in revealing it using a new technique that improved the sensitivity for detecting faint planets by a factor of two to fifteen compared to traditional methods.

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The significance of this achievement lies in the fact that it may allow for the discovery of smaller and cooler planets, without the need to modify existing instruments on telescopes or launch new observatories.

How can a planet disappear in front of the most powerful telescope?

The problem lies in the enormous difference between the brightness of the star and the planet orbiting it. Even young giant planets can be a hundred thousand times fainter than their stars, making photographing them like trying to see a tiny firefly up close to a very bright spotlight.

James Webb uses special instruments to block starlight, but some light escapes, creating a glare that obscures fainter objects. The traditional method involved photographing another star and using that image to remove the glare. However, subtle variations in telescope mirrors make this comparison imperfect.

To solve the problem, the researchers developed the "Physical Learning for Planetary Imaging" (FLIP) technique, which creates a digital version that simulates the passage of light through the telescope, then adjusts it to match the real observation and subtracts unwanted light.