NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures images of what’s believed to be newly discovered exoplanet

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured evidence of a planet beyond the solar system for the first time since its launch in 2021. 

The exoplanet, a planet beyond our solar system, has been dubbed TWA 7b and orbits the young nearby star TWA 7, NASA said. Scientists believe the exoplanet is around the mass of Saturn and is about 50 times the distance of Earth from the Sun, according to NASA.

Usually, planets of this size outside of our solar system are difficult to detect, but scientists used a technique called high-contrast imaging to detect the exoplanet, NASA said. Images of the exoplanet were taken using a coronagraph, which allows researchers to suppress the bright glare of a star to reveal faint nearby objects. 

Scientists said there was a very small chance the images could show a background galaxy, but evidence “strongly points to the source being a previously undiscovered planet.”

“Our observations reveal a strong candidate for a planet shaping the structure of the TWA 7 debris disk, and its position is exactly where we expected to find a planet of this mass,” said lead researcher Anne-Marie Lagrange.

The exoplanet could be a young and cold planet with a mass around 0.3 times that of Jupiter and a temperature near 120 degrees Fahrenheit, according to initial analysis from researchers. 

The first time scientists discovered an exoplanet was back in 1992. Astronomers have discovered nearly 6,000 exoplanets since then, but none of them are known to be habitable.