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Likely Saturn-Mass Planet Imaged by NASA Webb Is Lightest Ever Seen

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June 25, 2025 11:00AM (EDT)Release ID: 2025-126
An image of a nearby star and its vicinity. The star itself has been blocked out and its bright light has been removed, appearing black. A dashed circle with a star symbol at the center of the image marks the star’s location. A fuzzy blue disk surrounds the star. An orange spot, near the star and inside this disk around 2 o’clock, is identified as a planet orbiting the star. A fainter orange spot at the lower left edge marks a distant star.

Summary

The newfound planet represents Webb’s first direct image discovery of a planet.

Almost 6,000 exoplanets have been discovered to date. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has just added another likely planet to that list: a Saturn-mass planet named TWA 7 b. Astronomers found it by blocking the light of its host star to reveal the hidden planet. It’s located in a gap in one of three dust rings that were discovered around the star TWA 7 by previous ground-based observations. The object’s brightness, color, distance from the star, and position within the ring are consistent with theoretical predictions for a planet that is expected to be sculpting the surrounding debris disk.

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Full Article

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have captured compelling evidence of a planet with a mass similar to Saturn orbiting the young nearby star TWA 7. If confirmed, this would represent Webb’s first direct image discovery of a planet, and the lightest planet ever seen with this technique outside the solar system. The international team detected a faint infrared source in the disk of debris surrounding TWA 7 using Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). The distance between the source and TWA 7 is estimated to be about 50 times the distance of the Earth from the ...

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News releases highlighting the discoveries of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are produced for NASA by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, under NASA Contract NAS5-03127. News release content is developed by the News Team in STScI’s Office of Public Outreach.

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