Beta Pictoris System (Artist’s Concept)

This artist’s concept depicts the young Beta Pictoris planetary system with the newly discovered giant exoplanet, Beta Pictoris d, at the right. Beta Pictoris c circles closest to the star (left in this artist’s concept), Beta Pictoris b follows on a wider orbit, and the newly discovered Beta Pictoris d lies farther out, just inside the debris disk’s inner edge. In this artist’s concept, the planets are shown at their correct relative orbital distances, but the planets themselves have been enlarged and are not to scale relative to their orbits.

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently discovered Beta Pictoris d not through conventional imaging, but through spectroscopy, first detecting the unique chemical signature of its atmosphere.