The Brief
NASA has discovered a new planet beyond our solar system.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope recently captured evidence of the new planet using heat.
The new exoplanet has been named TWA 7b and orbits the young nearby star TWA 7.
NASA has made a new out of this world discovery. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope recently captured evidence of a new planet beyond our solar system.
The documentation represents Webb’s first direct image discovery of a planet, and the lightest planet ever seen with this technique.
What is TWA 7b?
What we know
NASA's telescope was recently able to detect the exoplanet, which has been named TWA 7b. The new object orbits the young nearby star TWA 7.
The telescope was able to detect the planet using heat. NASA officials said that usually planets of this size outside our solar system are difficult to detect, but scientists used a technique called high-contrast imaging to detect the exoplanet.
Scientists believe the exoplanet is around the mass of Saturn and is about 50 times the distance of Earth from the sun. TWA 7b is about 111 light-years away from Earth.
NASA says initial analysis suggests that the object could be a "young, cold planet with a mass around 0.3 times that of Jupiter (about 100 Earth masses)."
What's next
Now that scientists have discovered the planet, researchers say this is just the beginning of new discoveries.
NASA wants to better understand the object's properties and how the planet formed, which could also help researchers learn more about Earth.
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What they're saying
"Our observations reveal a strong candidate for a planet shaping the structure of the TWA 7 debris disc, and its position is exactly where we expected to find a planet of this mass,"said Dr. Anne-Marie Lagrange.
"This observatory enables us to capture images of planets with masses similar to those in the solar system, which represents an exciting step forward in our understanding of planetary systems, including our own," said co-author Mathilde Malin of Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
TWA 7b orbits the young nearby star TWA 7. (Credit: NASA)SIGN-UP FOR FOX 35'S BREAKING NEWS, DAILY NEWS NEWSLETTERS
What is an exoplanet?
Dig deeper
The first time scientists discovered an exoplanet was in 1992.
NASA says an exoplanet is any planet beyond our solar system.
Most exoplanets orbit other stars, but some free-floating exoplanets, called rogue planets, are untethered to any star.
NASA has confirmed more than 5,800 exoplanets out of the billions that scientists believe exist. However, none of them are known to be habitable.
The Source
This story was written based on information gathered from NASA and the ESA Webb Telescope, as well as information collected by FOX 35's Esther Bower in interviews with space experts and scientists.
