Overview

• The James Webb Space Telescope recorded its first exoplanet discovery by directly imaging a previously unknown world, TWA7 b, with findings published June 25 in Nature.
• TWA7 b has a mass comparable to Saturn—about 30 percent that of Jupiter—and orbits its star at roughly 52 astronomical units, far beyond Earth’s distance from the sun.
• The host, a 6.4-million-year-old red dwarf approximately 111 light-years away, is encircled by three debris rings, with the planet detected in a gap of the innermost ring.
• Led by Anne-Marie Lagrange of CNRS, researchers employed a coronagraph on JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument to mimic a solar eclipse and block the star’s glare.
• As the least massive planet yet directly imaged, TWA7 b’s discovery demonstrates JWST’s capability to hunt for even smaller exoplanets, including potentially Earth-sized targets.