Aniket Sanghi
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astroaniket.bsky.social
Aniket Sanghi
@astroaniket.bsky.social
94 followers 95 following 9 posts
Astronomy and Physics Texas Exes🤘– NSF Graduate Fellow @ Caltech – Exoplanet Hunter 🪐
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Reposted by Aniket Sanghi
jennaahart.bsky.social
New from Nature: “I had to take a moment of silence to appreciate what I was seeing.”

Astronomers reveal what could be the first ever image of a planet in its star’s habitable zone—and in the same star system as Avatar, no less

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Alien planet glimpsed in star's 'habitable zone'
A smudge of light spotted by the James Webb telescope near Alpha Centauri A could be the planet with the tightest orbit ever to be imaged directly.
www.nature.com
August 7, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Aniket Sanghi
philplait.bsky.social
WHOA.

Astronomers may have found a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A, the closest sun-like star to the Sun! It's a binary system, too, so if this is confirmed it'll be an AMAZING discovery!

badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/a-planet-f...

🔭🧪
A planet for Alpha Centauri A?
JWST spots what might be a Jupiter-sized world around the nearest Sun-like star
badastronomy.beehiiv.com
August 7, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Aniket Sanghi
science.esa.int
New kid on the block 🪐

Webb has found the strongest evidence yet of a gas giant around Alpha Centauri A!

If confirmed, it would be the nearest planet that orbits in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.

Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪
Illustration of a large spherical object that looks like a gas giant planet. The object appears to have bands of tan, orange, and dark red horizontal lines forming patterns similar to those in the atmosphere of Jupiter. The background is filled with thousands of distant stars that form a Milky Way-like band running from left to right. The host star, Alpha Centauri A, appears as a glowing white circle to the upper left of the planet. Further off in the distance above and to the right of the planet is a smaller glowing circle, nearby Alpha Centauri B. The words “Artist’s Concept” are in the lower left corner.
August 7, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Aniket Sanghi
stsci.edu
The Alpha Centauri System ⭐ ⭐, the closest star system to our own solar system, system contains two Sun-like stars, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, and a faint red dwarf star, Proxima Centauri, the only star of the system confirmed to host three confirmed planets. (1/7) 🧵 🔭 🧪
Illustration of a large spherical object that looks like a gas giant planet. The object appears to have bands of tan, orange, and dark red horizontal lines forming patterns similar to those in the atmosphere of Jupiter. The background is filled with thousands of distant stars that form a Milky Way-like band running from left to right. The host star, Alpha Centauri A, appears as a glowing white circle to the upper left of the planet. Further off in the distance above and to the right of the planet is a smaller glowing circle, nearby Alpha Centauri B. The words “Artist’s Concept” are in the lower left corner.
August 7, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Reposted by Aniket Sanghi
coreyspowell.bsky.social
After years of searching, astronomers have found strong evidence of a planet around Alpha Centauri, a near-twin of our Sun in the nearest neighboring star system.
This would also be the closest exoplanet ever observed directly. 🧪🔭

webbtelescope.org/contents/new...
This three-panel image captures NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observational search for a planet around the nearest Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A. The initial image shows the bright glare of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, and the middle panel then shows the system with a coronagraphic mask placed over Alpha Centauri A to block its bright glare. However, the way the light bends around the edges of the coronagraph creates ripples of light in the surrounding space. The telescope’s optics (its mirrors and support structures) cause some light to interfere with itself, producing circular and spoke-like patterns. These complex light patterns, along with light from the nearby Alpha Centauri B, make it incredibly difficult to spot faint planets. In the panel at the right, astronomers have subtracted the known patterns (using reference images and algorithms) to clean up the image and reveal faint sources like the candidate planet.
August 7, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Aniket Sanghi
stsci.edu
NEWS: Will you be my neighbor? #NASAWebb has found strong evidence of a gas giant planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A, a star in the stellar system closest to our own sun: webbtelescope.pub/4oyLiQa 🔭 🧪
Three panels, each showing a different view of the binary star system Alpha Centauri. The panel on the left is a Digitized Sky Survey image showing a single bright blue point source at the center of a black image with stars scattered throughout. The center of this source is outlined with a vertical box, tilted slightly to the left, with two diagonal lines leading to the second panel. The 2nd panel is a Hubble image that shows 2 white stars with 4 diffraction spikes each against a black background. The top star is labeled Alpha Cen B and the bottom Alpha Cen A. Alpha Cen A is outlined with a white square with 2 diagonal lines leading to the 3rd panel at the furthest right, which shows a Webb image of the star. An orange star icon and central black circle outlined in white marks the location of Alpha Cen A. A large white circle outlines a blurry red-toned field that surrounds the location of the star. A bright orange blob at 9 o’clock in relation to the star is labeled “S1” and circled.
August 7, 2025 at 3:03 PM
astroaniket.bsky.social
It was a truly heroic effort by the team at STScI to see this series of programs through. Check out Sarah’s thread for why this has been one of the most challenging observations for JWST!
sarahkendrew.bsky.social Sarah Kendrew @sarahkendrew.bsky.social · Aug 7
So pleased to see these results published and get the attention they deserve! For the nerds, I do encourage you to read the Beichman paper, section 2 AND all the way to the end, as it details the technical challenges involved in performing these observations. Because holy sh*t, it was HARD 🔭
jennaahart.bsky.social Jenna Ahart @jennaahart.bsky.social · Aug 7
New from Nature: “I had to take a moment of silence to appreciate what I was seeing.”

Astronomers reveal what could be the first ever image of a planet in its star’s habitable zone—and in the same star system as Avatar, no less

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
August 7, 2025 at 10:44 PM
astroaniket.bsky.social
Check out our short update on JWST mid-infrared observations of the closest Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A!
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
May 17, 2025 at 1:57 AM
astroaniket.bsky.social
I experiment with using a large archival PSF library to improve the performance of Reference Star Differential Imaging in Keck/NIRC2 observations!

I have provided raw images, PSF-subtracted images, and contrast curves for ~4 years worth of survey observations on Zenodo.

arxiv.org/abs/2408.14268
Efficiently Searching for Close-in Companions around Young M...
We present Super-RDI, a unique framework for the application of reference star differential imaging (RDI) to Keck/NIRC2 high-contrast imaging observations with the vortex coronagraph. Super-RDI...
arxiv.org
August 28, 2024 at 3:05 AM
astroaniket.bsky.social
Submitted my first-ever proposal as PI in the first week of grad school!! Feeling super proud and excited!🥳🤞✅
October 2, 2023 at 4:17 AM
astroaniket.bsky.social
First Post!🚨 Paper Day! 🥳
arxiv.org/abs/2309.03082
✅New brown dwarfs, spectra, and parallaxes
✅Luminosities, masses, radii, temperatures, and gravities for 1000+ ultracool dwarfs
✅Polynomial relations (see Tables 5 and A1 👀)
✅Comparison to BT-Settl and ATMO 2020 atmospheric models
The Hawaii Infrared Parallax Program. VI. The Fundamental...
We derive the bolometric luminosities ($L_{\mathrm{bol}}$) of 865 field-age and 189 young ultracool dwarfs (spectral types M6-T9, including 40 new discoveries presented here) by directly...
arxiv.org
September 7, 2023 at 5:17 AM