JWST Data Reveals 51 Eridani b With New Image-Processing Method

Researchers applied Physics-based Learning for Imaging Planets (FLIP) to James Webb Space Telescope observations and recovered a signal from 51 Eridani b that conventional processing had not revealed. The team used a telescope simulation calibrated against observed data to model and subtract glare from the planet’s host star.

Key details

• 51 Eridani b is a gas giant with about 11 times Jupiter’s mass, orbiting a star roughly 97 light-years from Earth.
• Researchers tested FLIP on JWST observations of three systems: HIP 65426 and 51 Eridani, which have known exoplanets, and TYC 5899, with no known planets.
• The analysis used JWST observations collected about two years before the research was published.
• The research appeared in Nature on Nov. 4, 2026.

The team reported that FLIP improved faint-exoplanet detection performance by 2 to 15 times in its tests.

Why it matters

A host star’s glare can obscure the much fainter light from an orbiting planet. FLIP’s approach uses a calibrated telescope model to separate that glare from the planet’s signal, giving researchers another way to examine faint exoplanets in telescope data.