“We’ve learned not to trust bright blobs in images.” This is one of the most photographed planetary systems, but a faint planet still played hide-and-seek in more than a decade's worth of photos

This image, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows Beta Pictoris d, a new planet found orbiting the star Beta Pictoris. The star is at the centre of the frame, and was subtracted when processing the data, revealing the environment around it. The new planet, indicated with an arrow, is the third one found around this star. The other two are Beta Pictoris b –– the bright source to the left, and Beta Pictoris c, orbiting much closer to the star and not seen here. The image was taken with the ERIS instrument at the VLT. Based on its infrared brightness and colour, the new planet appears to be a gas giant, about 2.4 times more massive than Jupiter. The diffuse horizontal band in this image is a debris disc around the star, seen here edge-on, the leftover material of planetary formation.

Beta Pictoris, located about 63 light-years away from Earth, is one of the most photographed planetary systems outside of our own – yet despite all the data coming from that part of the sky, a faint planet remained hidden. After researchers noted a bright spot in new images, the newly discovered planet was spotted in images dating back over 11 years.

“We weren’t looking for a new planet, explained lead researcher Aidan Gibbs. “We were trying to understand one we already knew existed. Then, this telltale signal appeared in the data where we didn’t expect it.”