JWST Spots a Super Jupiter
The vast majority of exoplanets (over 5,000 so far) are spotted only as they come between the Earth and their host star, and the light dims, or the wobble of the star, only around 100 of them have ever been directly imaged, and 1 by infrared, and that's HIP 65426 b, a super Jupiter orbiting at a similar orbit to our own planet Neptune from it's host star.
It really gives an idea of what JWST is going to be able to do, and through repeat observation, it may even be possible to begin to see features such as the cloud banding we see on our own planet Jupiter.
The reason this is such a historic view is that only a handful of systems are aligned sufficiently with our own, such that, the planet passes through the disk of the Sun, giving us the chance to observe it. Many planets orbit around their star, with the planets never passing the star from our perspective.
The ability to directly image the stars, and more so, to do this with various Infrared tools, gives a mass of information about the object which otherwise would never be known.
This planet is 385 light years from us, in the constellation of Centaurus, many closer by systems are known to exist, and with particular interest will be TRAPPIST-1, and Proxima Centauri, both having suspected planets in the habitable zones, albeit the stars are Red Dwarfs and prone to large stellar eruptions periodically.
Artists impression of the Trappist 1 system, none of these planets have ever been directly observed so far.
