Two teams spotted the same cold gas giant around Beta Pictoris just days apart in late 2022, ending an 11-year search for a planet hidden in earlier data.
The newly identified world is slightly bigger than Jupiter, orbits its star every 91 years and is about 100 times fainter than a previously known companion, making it the dimmest planet ever directly imaged from Earth.
One team used ESO's Very Large Telescope and archival observations, while a California-led group detected it with two Webb telescope observations as both were studying already known planets in the system.
Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away and only about 20 million years old, offers a rare view of a young planetary system still settling; fewer than 100 of more than 6,000 confirmed exoplanets have been found by direct imaging.
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Beta Pictoris d Unveiled: Direct Imaging of a 2.4 Jupiter-Mass Exoplanet in a Multi-Planet System
Overview
The discovery of Beta Pictoris d in late 2025 marks a significant milestone in exoplanet research. As one of the dimmest and least massive exoplanets ever directly imaged, its detection highlights major advancements in observational techniques and instrumentation. After more than a decade of persistent effort by astronomers, Beta Pictoris d’s unveiling makes the Beta Pictoris system only the second known to host at least three directly imaged planets. This breakthrough offers an unprecedented opportunity to study planetary formation and evolution within a single stellar neighborhood, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the search for distant worlds.