Webb telescope discovers and photographs its first exoplanet

What just happened? The James Webb space telescope has captured what is likely to be the first exoplanet discovered using the advanced observatory. An international team of astronomers uncovered the planet candidate in the debris field surrounding TWA 7, a low-mass star in the constellation Antlia that is located around 111 light-years away from Earth.

They used Webb's mid-infrared instrument to suppress the overwhelming glare from the host star, revealing faint objects that would have been too dim to spot otherwise.

The technique revealed what is believed to be a previously undetected exoplanet orbiting the star. TWA 7 b, as it has been named, is within the region where astronomers would expect to find a planet of its mass. Its brightness and color also line up with theoretical predictions for a young, cold, Saturn-mass planet.

The above image is a composite created using data from ESO's Very Large ...