Possible new planet discovered: a new member of the solar system?

One of the main goals of contemporary astronomy is to search for planets outside the solar system (exoplanets) that help us understand how planetary systems form. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope has just discovered a new one, a small gas giant with a mass 0.3 times that of Jupiter.

The telescope has managed to capture a direct image of the planet, called TWA 7 b , which is located next to the star TWA 7 and is the exoplanet with the smallest mass observed through direct images.

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The image was captured by an international team of astronomers, led by a CNRS researcher from the Paris-PSL Observatory , using the French-made coronagraph installed on the JWST's MIRI instrument.

The discovery, details of which were published Wednesday in the journal Nature, will help improve our understanding of early planet formation and the dynamic processes taking place in protoplanetary disks.

In search of exoplanets

So far, nearly 6,000 exoplanets have been confirmed to exist, some are massive, like Jupiter, but orbit their parent star much closer than Mercury orbits the Sun, others are rocky or icy, and many simply have nothing like them in the solar system .

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Some systems have more than one planet, planets orbiting two stars at once, and a few might even have the right conditions to support water on their surface, one of the necessary ingredients for life as we know it.

Although thousands of them have been detected indirectly, imaging exoplanets is a real challenge because they are less bright and, as seen from Earth, are very close to their star; their signal, drowned out by the star's signal, is not strong enough to be visible.

To overcome this problem, the CNRS developed a telescopic accessory for the James Webb MIRI instrument, a coronagraph that can reproduce the effect observed during an eclipse (by hiding the star, it is easier to observe the objects around it without being hidden by its light).

This technique has allowed the discovery of the new exoplanet, which is located within a disk of rocky debris and dust .

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Planets are thought to form from the dust and gas in protoplanetary disks, huge accumulations of debris, dust, and gas that orbit newly formed stars.

The most promising systems—those most studied by scientists—are those a few million years old, where the debris disks in which planets form can best be seen.

In this study, scientists took advantage of the unprecedented sensitivity of the James Webb Telescope's mid-infrared instrument to search for planets in the disk of the star TWA 7, about 6.4 million years old, which is made up of three rings, one of which is especially narrow and surrounded by two empty regions with almost no matter .

The Webb image revealed a source in the center of this narrow ring, and after ruling out observational bias, scientists concluded that it was most likely an exoplanet that may have formed in the space between the first and second rings of the disk .

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Furthermore, through detailed simulations, the authors have confirmed the formation of a thin ring and a 'hole' in the exact position of the planet, which correspond perfectly with Webb observations.

These images provide new insights into the interactions between protoplanetary disks and surrounding objects , and also expand the use of images to learn more about small exoplanets, the study says.

A little giant

TWA 7 b, the new exoplanet, is ten times lighter than those previously captured in images.

Its mass is comparable to that of Saturn , which is about 30% that of Jupiter , the most massive planet in the solar system.

This result marks a new step in the investigation and direct imaging of increasingly smaller exoplanets , more similar to Earth than to the gas giants of the solar system, although the James Webb has the potential to go even further in the future.

This discovery demonstrates the importance of future generations of space- and ground-based telescopes designed to search for exoplanets, especially with the help of more advanced coronagraphs. The most promising systems for these future observations are already being identified.

EFE