Overview
- Two independent teams using ESO’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope identified the new world and published coordinated papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 15, 2026.
- Named Beta Pictoris d, the planet is about 2.4 times the mass of Jupiter, orbits at roughly Neptune-like distance with an estimated 91-year period, and is about 100 times fainter than its sibling Beta Pictoris b.
- Webb’s NIRSpec spectra detected atmospheric molecules including carbon monoxide, water vapor and methane, which helped confirm the signal was a planet rather than disk structure or a background star.
- Teams recovered the object in archival images going back about 11 years, which allowed them to confirm common motion and establish the orbit without waiting years for new data.
- The finding explains puzzling features of the system’s debris disk and shows that combining moderate-resolution spectroscopy with deep archival imaging is a powerful method that next-generation telescopes such as the ELT are likely to expand.