JWST spies frigid alien world on bizarre orbit: 'One of the coldest, oldest and faintest planets that we've imaged to date'

Rings of white are on a dark background.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has notched another milestone, capturing a direct image of a distant, frigid planet in a solar system unlike our own, astronomers announced on Tuesday (June 10).

The exoplanet — named 14 Herculis c, or 14 Her c for short — orbits a sunlike star about 60 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hercules. In the new JWST image, it appears as a faint, fuzzy orange dot, its color a result of heat radiating from its atmosphere translated into visible hues.