For the first time ever, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has imaged an exoplanet. I know what you’re thinking: “JWST has already found planets, what are you talking about?” That’s true, but it did not image them. In other words, it detected them without seeing them.
This discovery is different. Webb has now seen an exoplanet with its own instruments, and TWA 7b isn’t just any exoplanet. At about one-third the mass of Jupiter, it is ten times less massive than any other planet previously directly imaged. Until now, direct imaging could only catch the heaviest giants — massive, blazing worlds orbiting far from their stars.
This detection, published in Nature, pushes the limits of what’s possible.
Why this is so impressive
Spotting a planet outside our solar system is like trying to photograph a firefly next to a searchlight — from a continent away. Stars are overwhelmingly bright, and planets are comparatively dim. For decades, astronomers have gotten around this problem by looking at how planets affect their stars.
Most exoplanets are discovered using indirect methods, primarily through transit photometry. In this method, astronomers detect a tiny dip in a star’s brightness as a planet crosses in front of it. Another indirect method is called radial velocity, which measures the star’s subtle movements caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet. These techniques infer a planet’s presence without actually seeing it.
The discovery of TWA 7b is different because it was made using direct imaging with the James Webb Space Telescope. We have an actual photo of the planet itself (although you can’t really tell much about it).
The planet, called TWA 7b, lies 110 light-years from Earth. It’s roughly the mass of Saturn, orbiting a young star still surrounded by a hazy disk of dust and rocky debris. That dusty ring system helped scientists find their mark.
To see the planet, the team used a special device called a coronagraph, built in France and installed on JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). A coronagraph acts like an artificial eclipse — blocking the blinding starlight so that dimmer objects nearby, like planets, can come into view. This technique had been used before on ground-based telescopes and even older space telescopes, but JWST’s powerful optics and infrared sensitivity make it much more powerful than its predecessors.
What we know about this system
The star in the solar system, called TWA 7, is just 6.4 million years old — practically a newborn by cosmic standards. Its planets must be even younger, and young planets tend to be hotter and brighter in the infrared, making them easier to detect.
Earlier observations had shown that TWA 7’s disk contained three distinct rings of debris. These rings hinted at the presence of hidden planets, and now researchers have confirmed one such planet.
The planet orbits about 52 astronomical units (AU) from its star, roughly 52 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. That gives it a very slow orbit, possibly taking several hundred Earth years to complete one trip around TWA 7.
It’s also located right inside a narrow dust ring, nestled between two almost-empty zones. Simulations confirmed that a planet with TWA 7b’s properties could sculpt such a ring — explaining the sharp features that had puzzled astronomers for years.
This is just the beginning
TWA 7b represents a class of exoplanets — lighter, cooler, and harder to see. They were out of our reach for direct imaging, before JWST’s mid-infrared capabilities opened a new window for observation.
Although it’s harder to do in practice, direct imaging has distinct advantages. It allows scientists to study the planets’ atmospheres and compositions more precisely. And because the planet is young, it may help researchers understand how gas giants form and evolve.
Perhaps most importantly, it’s a step toward the ultimate goal: directly imaging Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars. That goal remains distant — but with tools like JWST and the next generation of telescopes, it’s no longer a fantasy. This single, faint dot in the dust, is a key milestone on that journey. The JWST is just getting started.
The study was published in Nature.
