Image comparison (IMAGE)

Northwestern University

Image comparison

Caption

Left: JWST/NIRCam observation of star 51 Eridani A (51 Eri) in the F430M filter, using standard method KLIP (Soummer et al. 2012) to subtract the glare of the star. This method was not able to detect the planet 51 Eri b in the original analysis (Balmer et al. 2025), whose expected location is marked with a dashed circle. Middle: The same observation, but using new method FLIP (Ferrer-Chavez et al. 2026) to subtract the glare of the star. Astrophysicists obtained a significant detection (>5 sigma) of 51 Eri b. Right: Simulated image of 51 Eri b, highlighting that the planet is detected at its expected location and that the planet signal has the expected morphology. The location of the star 51 Eri is marked with a star symbol.

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Visualization credit: Rodrigo Ferrer-Chavez

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