The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered its 1st exoplanet and snapped its picture (image)

Image of the disk around the star TWA 7 recorded using ESO’s Very Large Telescope’s SPHERE instrument. The image captured with JWST’s MIRI instrument is overlayed. We can clearly see the empty area around TWA 7 B in the R2 ring (CC #1).

After three years of helping astronomers investigate known planets beyond the solar system, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered its first new planet.

The extrasolar planet, or "exoplanet," which has been designated TWA 7b, also happens to have the lowest mass of any planet that has been directly imaged beyond the solar system. With an estimated mass of around 100 times that of Earth or 0.3 times the mass of Jupiter, TWA 7b is ten times lighter than any exoplanet previously directly imaged.