Webb discovers exoplanet Beta Pictoris d

Astronomers using United States — NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a giant exoplanet, named Beta Pictoris d, orbiting the young star Beta Pictoris. The planet was detected via the chemical fingerprint of its atmosphere using Webb's NIRSpec instrument, marking the first time a directly imaged planet has been discovered primarily through moderate-resolution spectroscopy. Beta Pictoris d is at least twice the mass of Jupiter and orbits at about 30 astronomical units. The discovery makes Beta Pictoris only the second planetary system known to contain at least three imaged planets. The finding was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and confirmed by follow-up observations with Webb's MIRI instrument and independent imaging from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and Webb's NIRCam.