Overview

• The telescope’s MIRI coronagraph blocked the host star’s light to directly image TWA7b for the first time by Webb.
• TWA7b has about 0.3 times Jupiter’s mass—similar to Saturn—and orbits its 6.4-million-year-old star at roughly 50 astronomical units.
• Located 111 light-years away in the Antlia constellation, the exoplanet is the lowest-mass world ever directly imaged.
• The planet occupies a gap between rings in its star’s debris disk, offering direct evidence of disk-planet interactions in an infant system.
• Astronomers say Webb’s success with small, cold exoplanets paves the way for imaging even lighter worlds, potentially including super-Earths.