A New Planet Spotted by the James Webb Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just made a big find. It has spotted its first new planet outside our solar system. This planet, named TWA 7b, is special. It is the lightest planet ever seen directly outside our solar system. It is about 100 times the mass of Earth. That is still very light compared to other planets that have been seen before. TWA 7b is located around a young star called CE Antilae, or TWA 7. This star is very young, only a few million years old. Our sun, on the other hand, is around 4. 6 billion years old. The star TWA 7 is about 111 light-years away from Earth. Astronomers have been interested in this star for a long time. The reason is that we see it "pole-on. " This means we can see the disk of debris around it from above or below. This gives us a clear view of the structures in the disk. The disk around TWA 7 is divided into three rings. One of these rings is narrow and has two empty lanes with little matter. When the JWST looked at this ring, it saw an infrared-emitting source. Scientists think this is the young exoplanet TWA 7b. They used simulations to confirm this. The simulations showed a thin ring and a "hole" exactly where the planet is. This matches what the JWST saw. The JWST is great at finding young, low-mass planets like TWA 7b. These planets emit infrared radiation, which the JWST is very sensitive to. Finding these planets is hard because they are often drowned out by the light from their parent stars. But the JWST has a tool called a coronagraph. This tool blocks out the light from the central stars. This allows the faint infrared emissions of the orbiting exoplanets to be detected. This is a big deal. TWA 7b is the lowest mass planet ever imaged and the first exoplanet discovered by the JWST. But this is just the beginning. The JWST is powerful and will likely find many more planets. It will image even lighter worlds in the future.