NASA's Webb Discovers Its First Alien Planet And It's Hiding A Trojan Disk Surprise

This week NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) provided the first direct image of a planet with a mass similar to Saturn's, orbiting the young star TWA 7. This landmark observation, detailed in the Nature journal, not only marks Webb's inaugural planet discovery but also unveils the lightest exoplanet ever seen.

Astronomers utilizing Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) detected a faint infrared source nestled within the debris disk surrounding TWA 7, a red dwarf star approximately 6.4 million years old and located about 34 light-years away in the TW Hydrae association. The newly identified object, designated TWA 7 b, is estimated to be roughly 50 times the Earth-Sun distance from its host star, a position that aligns with expected features observed within the debris disk.