NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has identified a previously unknown giant planet orbiting the young star Beta Pictoris. The find brings the total number of known planets in the system to three.
Astronomers detected Beta Pictoris d through its atmospheric chemical signatures rather than direct imaging. The planet showed traces of carbon monoxide, water vapor and methane while researchers studied the known planet Beta Pictoris b using the telescope's NIRSpec instrument.
The discovery was confirmed with follow-up observations from Webb's MIRI instrument and independent data from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. Beta Pictoris d is estimated to have at least twice the mass of Jupiter and orbits at roughly 30 astronomical units.
Lead author Aidan Gibbs of the University of California, San Diego, noted that the planet appeared unexpectedly in the data. The system lies about 63 light-years from Earth and is roughly 23 million years old.
Researchers say the spectroscopic method used here could help find other planets hidden by bright debris disks around distant stars.