Faintest Exoplanet Ever Imaged From Earth Discovered Around Beta Pictoris

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope have discovered Beta Pictoris d, the faintest exoplanet ever imaged from Earth. The planet is about 2.4 times Jupiter's mass and orbits the star Beta Pictoris once every 91 years. It is 100 times dimmer than its neighbor Beta Pictoris b. The discovery was confirmed by two independent teams, who published their findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The Webb team detected water vapor, methane, and carbon monoxide in the planet's atmosphere. The VLT team found the planet in archival images dating back 11 years. Beta Pictoris is a young star (23 million years old) located 63 light-years away in the constellation Pictor. The planet's orbit matches predictions based on anomalies in the system's debris disk. The Extremely Large Telescope, expected to begin observations in 2029, may directly image rocky exoplanets in the future.