JWST’s view of the α Cen AB system. Shown above is a background-subtracted Stage 2b F1550C image of the α Cen AB system from 2024 August. The image is oriented north up and east left. The white stars denote the approximate positions of α Cen B, saturated near the top of the image, and α Cen A in the lower part of the image hidden behind the F1550C mask. The right color bar (logarithmically scaled) is associated with this image. At the edge of the detector, to the west of α Cen A, is the known background source KS5 (P. Kervella et al. 2016). To the east of α Cen A is the known background source KS2 (P. Kervella et al. 2016), shown as an inset, as it is only detected after performing PSF subtraction (no color bar shown for the inset, scaled linearly between −5 and 50 MJy sr⁻¹). An ≈2﹩\mathop{.}\limits^{^{\prime\prime} }﹩75 radius region around α Cen A is shaded and mapped to three PSF-subtracted images, one for each observation epoch. Candidate S1 is seen only in 2024 August. The bottom color bar (linearly scaled) is associated with the three PSF-subtracted images. For reference, 1 MJy sr⁻¹ ≈ 4.6 × 10⁻⁶ Jy AiryCore^–1, where AiryCore is defined as the area of a circular aperture of diameter = 1 FWHM (﹩\approx 0\mathop{.}\limits^{^{\prime\prime} }5﹩).