Planets are thought to form from dust and gas in protoplanetary disks, and debris disks are the remnants of planet formation. Aged a few Myr up to a few Gyr, debris disks have lost their primordial ga...

arXiv abstract link

Planets are thought to form from dust and gas in protoplanetary disks, and debris disks are the remnants of planet formation. Aged a few Myr up to a few Gyr, debris disks have lost their primordial ga...

YouTube video by Erling Haaland

YouTube video by Erling Haaland

El telescopio James Webb confirma un planeta del tamaño de Saturno en el sistema TWA7, revelando cómo los mundos jóvenes moldean sus discos de polvo.

Space Science Highlights For Today.For the first time, scientists have used the MIRI instrument with a coronagraph on JWST to directly detect a new exoplanet...

The exoplanet, a planet beyond our solar system, has been dubbed TWA 7b after NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured evidence of it.

YouTube video by CinemaStix

YouTube video by copernikos1

This image shows the disk around the star TWA 7. It was captured using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope’s SPHERE instrument. The image captured with JWST’s MIRI instrument is overlayed on it. The empty area around TWA 7 b in the R2 ring is clearly visible. Credit: A.-M. Lagrange and al. - Evidence for a sub-jovian planet in the young TWA7 disk, 2025 The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a direct image of a previously unknown exoplanet. This discovery was the direct result of research led by a scientist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. The details, published June 25, 2025, in _Nature_ , note that this a first for the telescope and was achieved using a French-produced coronagraph installed on the JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). **Tough to photograph** Astronomers study exoplanets, in part, to help us understand how our (and other) solar system formed. As of June 11, there have been 5,921 confirmed discoveries. Most of these planets have been detected indirectly because obtaining images of them is challenging. Seen from Earth, exoplanets are faint and located quite close to the star they orbit. So, their light tends to be overwhelmed by that of their star. But JWST still managed to capture an image of TWA 7 b, the designation given to the new exoplanet. To overcome this problem, the CNRS developed, in collaboration with the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy at Durham University in England, a telescopic attachment for MIRI that functions like a coronagraph. It mimics the effect observed during a total solar eclipse. But instead of the Moon blocking the Sun’s light, the coronagraph blocks the light from the star, which makes it easier for the space telescope to observe any objects surrounding it. It is this technique that allowed the team to discover the new exoplanet, located within a disk of rocky debris. **Look at me!** Some systems of planets around distant stars are more promising targets than others. Scientists have focused on ones that are a few millions years old and that they can image from above (because one of their poles points toward Earth). What JWST sees, hopefully, is the star surrounded by a disk of material that will make — or has made — a planet or planets. Because these planets are young, they’re still hot, which makes them brighter than others that formed previously. Helping discovery is that such low-mass planets are easier to detect in middle-infrared wavelengths, for which the JWST was designed to view. Among the disks the JWST detected, two drew special attention from researchers, with previous observations revealing concentric ring-like structures within them. One of the two systems, the star CE Antliae, but for this study named TWA 7, has three visible rings. One is narrow and is surrounded by two empty areas. The image obtained by the JWST revealed a heat source in this ring. After much study, the scientists concluded that it was most probably an exoplanet. Computer simulations have confirmed the formation of a thin ring and a hole at the planet’s position, which corresponds to the observations made with the JWST. **A lightweight** The new planet is TWA 7 b, where the “b” means that this is the first exoplanet discovered in this system. (The “a,” if used, refers to the star.) One of the striking things about this discovery is that TWA 7 b is 10 times less massive than those previously captured in images. Its mass is comparable to Saturn’s, or 30 percent that of Jupiter. This discovery shows that the JWST can directly image small exoplanets, which are more similar to the Earth than to Jupiter. And the space telescope may be able to spot even smaller worlds. Researchers hope to capture images of planets with just 10 percent of Jupiter’s mass. This discovery shows that future generations of space-based and ground-based telescopes can, indeed, make significant discoveries of exoplanets, especially with the help of more advanced coronagraphs. The next few decades could see a huge rise in the number of Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars.

(Image credit: A.-M. Lagrange and al. - Evidence for a sub-Jovian planet in the young TWA7 disk, 2025) Image of the disk around the star TWA 7 recorded using ESO's Very Large Telescope's SPHERE instrument. The image captured with JWST’s...

This image shows the disk around the star TWA 7. It was captured using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope’s SPHERE instrument. The image captured with JWST’s MIRI instrument is overlayed on it. The empty area around TWA 7 b in the R2 ring is clearly visible. Credit: A.-M. Lagrange and al. - Evidence for a sub-jovian planet in the young TWA7 disk, 2025 The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a direct image of a previously unknown exoplanet. This discovery was the direct result of research led by a scientist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. The details, published June 25, 2025, in _Nature_ , note that this a first for the telescope and was achieved using a French-produced coronagraph installed on the JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). **Tough to photograph** Astronomers study exoplanets, in part, to help us understand how our (and other) solar system formed. As of June 11, there have been 5,921 confirmed discoveries. Most of these planets have been detected indirectly because obtaining images of them is challenging. Seen from Earth, exoplanets are faint and located quite close to the star they orbit. So, their light tends to be overwhelmed by that of their star. But JWST still managed to capture an image of TWA 7 b, the designation given to the new exoplanet. To overcome this problem, the CNRS developed, in collaboration with the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy at Durham University in England, a telescopic attachment for MIRI that functions like a coronagraph. It mimics the effect observed during a total solar eclipse. But instead of the Moon blocking the Sun’s light, the coronagraph blocks the light from the star, which makes it easier for the space telescope to observe any objects surrounding it. It is this technique that allowed the team to discover the new exoplanet, located within a disk of rocky debris. **Look at me!** Some systems of planets around distant stars are more promising targets than others. Scientists have focused on ones that are a few millions years old and that they can image from above (because one of their poles points toward Earth). What JWST sees, hopefully, is the star surrounded by a disk of material that will make — or has made — a planet or planets. Because these planets are young, they’re still hot, which makes them brighter than others that formed previously. Helping discovery is that such low-mass planets are easier to detect in middle-infrared wavelengths, for which the JWST was designed to view. Among the disks the JWST detected, two drew special attention from researchers, with previous observations revealing concentric ring-like structures within them. One of the two systems, the star CE Antliae, but for this study named TWA 7, has three visible rings. One is narrow and is surrounded by two empty areas. The image obtained by the JWST revealed a heat source in this ring. After much study, the scientists concluded that it was most probably an exoplanet. Computer simulations have confirmed the formation of a thin ring and a hole at the planet’s position, which corresponds to the observations made with the JWST. **A lightweight** The new planet is TWA 7 b, where the “b” means that this is the first exoplanet discovered in this system. (The “a,” if used, refers to the star.) One of the striking things about this discovery is that TWA 7 b is 10 times less massive than those previously captured in images. Its mass is comparable to Saturn’s, or 30 percent that of Jupiter. This discovery shows that the JWST can directly image small exoplanets, which are more similar to the Earth than to Jupiter. And the space telescope may be able to spot even smaller worlds. Researchers hope to capture images of planets with just 10 percent of Jupiter’s mass. This discovery shows that future generations of space-based and ground-based telescopes can, indeed, make significant discoveries of exoplanets, especially with the help of more advanced coronagraphs. The next few decades could see a huge rise in the number of Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars.