Space

The James Webb telescope has just found its first alien planet... and it looks like nothing in our solar system

NASA’s James Webb telescope captured its first direct image of a distant gas giant, revealing groundbreaking insights into planet formation beyond our solar system.

Caltech

Roddy Cons

Scottish sports journalist and content creator. After running his own soccer-related projects, in 2022 he joined Diario AS, where he mainly reports on the biggest news from around Europe’s leading soccer clubs, Liga MX and MLS, and covers live games in a not-too-serious tone. Likes to mix things up by dipping into the world of American sports.

Update: Jun 28th, 2025 18:19 EDT

Since its launch in 2021, the James Webb telescope has shed a significant amount of light on the makeup of the early universe, as well as obtain information on exoplanets, which are known planets beyond the Earth’s solar system. Now, though, the telescope has gone a step further, discovering a brand new exoplanet.

What is an exoplanet?

An exoplanet is a planet which orbits a star which isn’t the Sun.

Approximately 5,900 exoplanets have been discovered in the last 30 years, but less than 2% of that figure have been directly imaged, making this latest finding all the more remarkable. In many cases, exoplanets are detected indirectly when they cause a star’s light to fade slightly by passing in front of it.

A never-before-seen planet! 🪐 This is Webb’s first discovery of a planet using direct imaging. With a mass similar to...
Publicada por NASA's James Webb Space Telescope en Miércoles, 25 de junio de 2025

Size and distance from Earth

Researchers say the newest known exoplanet is a young gas giant planet, similar in size to Saturn, which, with a radius about nine times the size of the Earth’s, is our solar system’s second biggest planet after Jupiter. Despite that, it is the smallest exoplanet discovered by direct imaging, and is only a tenth of the size of the previous smallest.

The direct image showed the exoplanet orbiting a star smaller than the sun located about 110 light-years from Earth. For reference, one light-year is 5.9 trillion miles.

Webb telescope “opens a new window” into space

“Webb (the telescope) opens a new window - in terms of mass and the distance of a planet to the star - of exoplanets that had not been accessible to observations so far,” explained astronomer Anne-Marie Lagrange of the French research agency CNRS and LIRA/Observatoire de Paris, the lead author of the study. “This is important to explore the diversity of exoplanetary systems and understand how they form and evolve”.

What else do we know about the new exoplanet?

Researchers weren’t able to discern the composition of the exoplanet’s atmosphere, which they hope to do with future Webb observations. However, they were able to determine that it has two wide concentric ring-like structures made up of rocky and dusty material, and another narrow ring which the planet sits inside. A different ring structure to the aforementioned Saturn.

The study concluded that the planet, along with the star it orbits, is approximately six million years old, significantly younger than the sun and its solar system, estimated to date back 4.5 billion years.

With that in mind, it is believed the exoplanet could still be gaining mass, which would result in it increasing in size.

Size matters with telescopes and planets

Size is key when it comes to observing planets with the James Webb telescope, which doesn’t have the capability to directly image Earth-sized exoplanets, which are too small.

However, Lagrange is hopeful that will change as technology continues to advance, and believes that will lead to huge advances in our understanding of life beyond Earth: “Looking forward, I do hope the projects of direct imaging of Earth-like planets and searches for possible signs of life will become a reality”.