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Webb Telescope Directly Images Saturn-Mass Exoplanet, a First for Observatory

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Published Jul 6, 2025, 09:49 PM

The James Webb Space Telescope has, for the first time, discovered a previously unknown exoplanet through direct imaging. An international team reports in Nature that Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) photographed a faint infrared source within the debris disk of the young red dwarf TWA 7, about 110 light-years from Earth in the constellation Antlia.

Designated TWA 7b, the planet is roughly one-third the mass of Jupiter—comparable to Saturn and about 100 times the mass of Earth—making it the lightest world ever detected with this technique. It orbits its six-million-year-old host star at roughly 52 astronomical units, nestled in a gap between three concentric rings of dust and rock that circle TWA 7.

Astronomers used MIRI’s coronagraph to block the star’s glare, then applied high-contrast image processing to reveal the planet—an approach that has yielded fewer than two percent of the nearly 5,900 exoplanets identified to date. Webb’s sensitivity demonstrates its ability to probe smaller and colder worlds than were previously accessible to direct imaging.

“Our observations reveal a strong candidate for a planet shaping the structure of the TWA 7 debris disk, and its position is exactly where we expected to find a planet of this mass,” said lead author Anne-Marie Lagrange of France’s CNRS and Observatoire de Paris. Researchers say the result opens a new window on planet formation and brings scientists a step closer to imaging Earth-sized planets around nearby stars.

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#James Webb Space Telescope #Nature #MIRI #Earth #Antlia #Jupiter #Saturn #Webb #France #CNRS #Observatoire de Paris

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Black Hole

@konstructivizm

JWST just captured a baby star lit up space like a glowing lightsaber. In a new image from the James Webb Space Telescope, a newborn star called HH 211, about 1,000 light-years away in the Perseus constellation, is blasting out fast jets of gas in opposite directions. These

Black Hole

@konstructivizm

The glowing center of the Milky Way, captured by the James Webb telescope.

La Razón

@larazon_es

For the first time, the Webb telescope discovers a planet that could be alien. 🔭 The finding confirms the enormous potential of this space telescope to explore the farthest and most unknown corners of the universe

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