Astronomers find 'hidden' planet orbiting star after 11 years

Two independent teams of astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting the young star Beta Pictoris, located 63 light-years from Earth. This "hidden" planet is the dimmest ever directly imaged, being 100 times fainter than two other known planets in the same system. The discovery was made by chance while researchers were studying the known planets around Beta Pictoris.

One team, led by researchers from Scotland and Germany, used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. They found the planet and then reviewed older observation data to confirm its orbit. The second team, from the University of California, detected the planet's presence with just two observations using the James Webb Space Telescope. Both teams published their findings separately in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

This cold gas giant, slightly larger than Jupiter, orbits its star every 91 years. It had been present in observation data for 11 years but was obscured by its brighter star and the other two planets. "It's like playing hide-and-seek for 11 years," said Markus Bonse, co-lead of the first research team. The Beta Pictoris system is only about 20 million years old, making it a "child" compared to our 4.5-billion-year-old solar system. Of the over 6,000 confirmed exoplanets, most were found by observing dips in starlight as planets pass in front of their stars, with direct imaging accounting for fewer than 100.

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It's like playing hide-and-seek for 11 years.