James Webb Space Telescope Discovers Exoplanet For The First Time

The James Webb Space Telescope, which has been actively observing since the summer of 2022, came to the fore with a major discovery announcement today. NASA has announced that James Webb has made the first exoplanet discovery.

The exoplanet, named LHS 475 b, is almost exactly the same size as Earth, according to shared details. Moreover, the planet is located 41 light-years away, which can be considered too close when we consider space.

Information about the new exoplanet is quite limited.

The work, led by Kevin Stevenson and Jacob Lusitg-Yaeger from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, also provided the first information about the planet. The team studied the planet’s structure with the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec).

Sharing that the planet is rocky, not a gas giant, the team stated that it may not have an atmosphere. Because NASA stated that the spectrum in the chart above is similar to the spectrum of planets that do not have an atmosphere.

Of course, the information obtained was not limited to these. It has also been announced that the planet is several hundred degrees warmer than Earth. It was also stated that the planet is much closer to its star than planets of similar sizes (Earth, Venus) in the Solar System.