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This will never stop blowing my mind. A 12-year sequence of real telescope images of a star 133 lightyears away. And around it, four planets slowly orbiting. Four real exoplanets, each more massive than Jupiter, imaged as they move around their host star.

Paul Byrne

@theplanetaryguy.com

This video comprises 10 images taken with the Keck Telescope from 2010 to 2021. Jason Wang made the video, with data reduced by William Thompson and Christian Marois and observations organized by Quinn Konopacky, assisted by Bruce Macintosh (@bmacastro.bsky.social), Travis Barman, and Ben Zuckerman.

2/10/26, 2:18 am4 reposts175 likes

Paul Byrne

@theplanetaryguy.com

Read more: jasonwang.space/orbits.html Video credit: Jason Wang (Northwestern)/William Thompson (UVic)/Christian Marois (NRC Herzberg)/Quinn Konopacky (UCSD)

nonplussed

@nonplussed73.bsky.social

Would this be considered a direct image of an exoplanet? I thought that hadn't happened yet.

Paul Byrne

@theplanetaryguy.com

These are absolutely directly imaged exoplanets. We have quite a few by now!

nonplussed

@nonplussed73.bsky.social

Thanks. I'm obviously way behind!

Juan Nunez-Iglesias

@jni.codes

Is there a full code pipeline from raw observations to masking, alignment, motion interpolation, and final movie generation? I’d love to see all the steps!