Any future historian of 21st-century space science may well divide the subject into two eras: before the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and after. The telescope was built to transform our understanding of the cosmos by studying the first stars and galaxies, and within less than a year of operations, it has already delivered tantalizing and potentially revolutionary results from its observations of the early universe. Yet JWST’s work is poised to transform many other subfields of astronomy, none arguably more so than the study of exoplanets, worlds orbiting other stars. Astronomers now know of more than 5,000 exoplanets but know next to nothing about most of them—their composition, environmental conditions or even prospects for life. JWST is beginning to change that, thanks to its as-yet-unparalleled ability to directly observe these alien worlds, picking apart their light to discern finer details and occasionally even managing to snap an exoplanet’s picture against the overwhelming glare of its home star.
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