24/07/2026
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope discovered a new giant exoplanet, Beta Pictoris d, orbiting the young star Beta Pictoris, about 63 light-years away and roughly 23 million years old. This planetary system is famous because it is one of the best-studied young systems in our galaxy, it was among the first where a planet was directly imaged, and it already had two known giant planets, Beta Pictoris b and Beta Pictoris c; the new planet was found by Jean-Baptiste Ruffio and collaborators using JWST’s NIRSpec Integral Field Unit, with follow-up work led by Ben Sutlieff and Markus Bonse, plus later confirmation from MIRI, NIRCam, and the Very Large Telescope. The planet had been hidden because the system contains a bright, dusty debris disk that makes faint planets hard to separate from background light and disk structures, so the team detected it through its atmospheric signature, especially carbon monoxide, rather than by a simple bright dot in an image.
Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
Image credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Leah Hustak (STScI); Science: Aidan Gibbs (UC San Diego), Jean-Baptiste Ruffio (UC San Diego), Alexis Bidot (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)