Ben Sutlieff

Astronomers discovered a faint, cold gas giant planet orbiting the young star Beta Pictoris after more than a decade of observation. Two independent teams using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s Webb Space Telescope confirmed the planet, the dimmest ever directly imaged from Earth, which had previously been obscured by the star’s brightness and other planets.

Astronomers discovered the dimmest directly imaged planet around Beta Pictoris using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s Webb Space Telescope. The cold gas giant, 100 times fainter than known planets, orbits a 20-million-year-old star system 63 light-years from Earth.