A new image-processing method has revealed the giant exoplanet 51 Eridani b in James Webb Space Telescope observations where conventional processing had failed to distinguish it from its star’s glare.

This was a new detection in those observations, not the discovery of a previously unknown planet. Space.com reported on November 6 that ground-based telescopes first discovered 51 Eridani b in 2015. Its star is about 97 light-years away.

How FLIP removes starlight

The Northwestern University-led team described its work in a study published in Nature on November 4, 2026. According to the university’s announcement, the approach improved sensitivity to faint planets by between two and 15 times across the observations tested.

Called Physics-based Learning for Imaging Planets, or FLIP, the method models how light travels through a telescope. Researchers adjust a virtual version of the instrument to reproduce small optical imperfections, then subtract the simulated starlight from the recorded image.

The team tested observations of HIP 65426 and 51 Eridani, which have known planets, alongside TYC 5899, which has no known planetary companions. The recovered signal came from Webb data collected two years earlier.

The technique could help astronomers extract more information from existing observations without changing telescope hardware. Researchers hope it will support future searches for fainter worlds, although the demonstrated result concerns a known giant planet rather than an Earth-like world.