Two teams reported the faint world around Beta Pictoris after spotting a planet about 100 times dimmer than the system’s known companions.
11 years of archived data had masked the gas giant, which was lost in the glare of its young host star and two brighter planets until observations from Chile’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s Webb confirmed it.
The newly identified planet is slightly larger than Jupiter and takes 91 years to orbit Beta Pictoris, a star system only about 20 million years old.
Fewer than 100 of more than 6,000 confirmed exoplanets have been found by direct imaging, making the detection a rare look at a planetary system still settling after formation.
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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.