The James Webb Space Telescope can add another cosmic accomplishment to its list: The space observatory has been used to confirm the existence of an exoplanet for the first time.
The celestial body, known as LHS 475 b and located outside of our solar system, is almost exactly the same size as Earth. The rocky world is 41 light-years away in the Octans constellation.
"There are some terrestrial-type atmospheres that we can rule out," Lustig-Yaeger said. "It can't have a thick methane-dominated atmosphere, similar to that of Saturn's moon Titan." "We're at the forefront of studying small, rocky exoplanets," Lustig-Yaeger said. "We have barely begun scratching the surface of what their atmospheres might be like."
The dusty disk around the star, named AU Mic, represents the remnants of planet formation. When small, solid objects called planetesimals — a planet in the making — crashed into each other, they left behind a big, dusty ring around the star and formed a debris disk. The AU Mic disk is located 32 light-years away in the Microscopium constellation. The star is about 23 million years old, so planet formation has already ceased around the star — since that process usually takes less than 10 million years, according to the researchers. Other telescopes have spotted two planets orbiting the star.
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