NASA's Webb Telescope Finds Hidden Giant Planet in Beta Pictoris System
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a third giant planet, Beta Pictoris d, hidden inside the dust disk of the well-studied Beta Pictoris system, found through its atmospheric chemical signature rather than direct imaging. Source: NASA / Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a previously unknown giant planet, Beta Pictoris d, hiding inside the bright debris disk of the Beta Pictoris system, located 63 light-years from Earth. The planet was not found by spotting a bright point of light but by detecting a distinctive carbon monoxide signature in the system's spectrum while researchers studied a different, already-known planet in the system. Follow-up observations with Webb's MIRI instrument detected water vapor and methane, and the discovery was independently confirmed by a separate team using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. Beta Pictoris d is estimated to be at least twice the mass of Jupiter and orbits at roughly 30 astronomical units, comparable to Neptune's distance from the Sun in our own solar system. Beta Pictoris now becomes only the second known planetary system with three confirmed giant planets. The findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, led by Aidan Gibbs of UC San Diego. Source: NASA, Astrophysical Journal Letters.