Feed aggregator
Perseverance’s Trip to ‘Broom Point’
PNG (16.62 MB)
DescriptionThis orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took to get to a location the science team has dubbed the “Broom Point member,” a sequence of layered bedrock likely more than 3.9 billion years old. As planned, the rover landed inside Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. It investigated the crater’s western delta and inlet river valley, Neretva Vallis, before summiting the crater rim in December 2024 following a rim-to-crest climb of 2,620 feet (800 meters).
The Broom Point region is situated on the outer edge of the crater rim and was visited by the rover in mid-2025. The yellow dot indicates location where the rover took a selfie.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.
For more about Perseverance: science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/
JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built MRO and supports its operations. The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado.
For more information, visit:
science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From PhotojournalPhotojournal
Search Photojournal
Photojournal’s Latest Content
Feedback
Mathematicians are closing in on the hidden order inside chaos
A new breakthrough pushes the limits of randomness, bringing a decades-old mathematical mystery closer to resolution
Observers Beware: Reflect Orbital’s Space Mirrors Approved for Launch
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved the launch of Reflect Orbital's Earendil 1 satellite — a space mirror 18 meters wide designed to reflect sunlight to the ground.
The post Observers Beware: Reflect Orbital’s Space Mirrors Approved for Launch appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
What's It Like to Travel Near the Speed of Light? Part 1: The Broken View
You can't ride alongside a beam of light, and the reason why opens a door onto the strangest parts of relativity. A tour of rest frames, why a photon has no point of view, and how your speed reshapes reality itself.
Spiral Arms and Bars are Galactic Fuel Pumps for Star Formation
Astronomers thought that early galaxies were messy, clumpy, and turbulent from mergers. That means their gas was all stirred up. So what could explain the rapid star formation during the Cosmic Noon? New research shows that galaxies had well-ordered morphologies earlier than thought, and that their spiral arms and bars allowed gas to flow freely, forming more stars.
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reads Record of Ancient Mars Impacts
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s Perseverance took this selfie at “Witch Hazel Hill” on Jezero Crater’s rim on May 10, 2025. The small dark hole in the rock in front of the rover is the borehole made when the rover collected the “Bell Island” sample. The small puff of dust left of center and below the horizon line is a dust devil.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has uncovered evidence that a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) stack of ancient rock on the rim of Jezero Crater was built by repeated asteroid impacts. Referred to as the “Broom Point member” by the rover’s science team, this sequence of layered bedrock is likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making it among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover.
Released Wednesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the findings offer a window into one of the most tumultuous chapters in the history of the solar system.
“Since leaving Jezero, Perseverance has been exploring a brand-new frontier, both geographically and geologically — a chapter of Martian time that predates the crater itself,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance deputy project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “On Earth, our earliest geologic history has been fundamentally broken up, deformed, and erased by plate tectonics. Because Mars lacks plate tectonics to recycle its crust, this ancient record remains intact, giving us a rare glimpse into a geological time period that doesn’t exist on our own planet.”
Reading between layersAfter ascending the western rim of Jezero Crater in late 2024, Perseverance began examining surrounding locations with its science instruments. Their data at Broom Point revealed six distinct rock types, including breccias — rocks composed of angular fragments — alternating with layers of fine-grained, pulverized rock dust. Rock fragments within the breccias are pocked with gas-bubble cavities, indicating they were once molten.
The presence of tiny, dark, glassy beads within the layers offered an important clue about how these rocks formed. While volcanoes can produce similar glassy droplets, they rarely occur in such high abundance, pointing to asteroid impacts, instead, as the primary architect. In fact, the largest beads rival those flung out by the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid’s impact on Earth.
NASA’s Perseverance rover captured its own tracks descending from the rim of Jezero Crater. The bright-colored rocks running from middle left to middle right of the image, a formation dubbed the “Broom Point member,” are likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making them among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
The repetition of these distinct rock types multiple times throughout this thick sequence of rock indicates that high-energy impact events happened again and again across this region of early Mars.
“The different rock layers are a record of variable-sized impacts occurring at different distances from where this rock sequence was accumulating,” said Alex Jones, a Ph.D. student in planetary geology at Imperial College London and lead author of the paper. “Some large impacts took place very far away, some small impacts nearby. Their debris all ended up landing here, constructing this thick section of rock.”
How these layers formed may suggest an interaction with water or ice. Several of the layers look like they may have been formed by fast, ground-hugging debris flows. On Earth, these powerful, fluidlike surges can occur when molten rock hits water or ice that instantly flashes into steam.
Cosmic one-two punchSome of Broom Point’s layers tilt at angles exceeding 80 degrees — nearly vertical — which is far too steep to be caused by the impact that created Jezero Crater.
Instead, scientists suspect a cosmic “one-two punch” shaped this landscape long ago. First, a colossal asteroid impact created the 1,200-mile-wide (1,900-kilometer-wide) Isidis Basin, one of the largest impact basins on Mars, upending and tilting the once-flat rock layers. Later, a second asteroid likely struck, forming Jezero Crater, which measures 28 miles (45 kilometers) across. This second impact fractured and uplifted the already-tilted rocks into the dramatic formations the rover sees today.
To pin down exactly when these events took place, the Perseverance team collected two core samples, dubbed “Bell Island” and “Main River.” If a future mission were to return them to Earth, laboratory dating could determine when and how often impacts were occurring on early Mars — and, by extension, the infant Earth, whose own early impact record has been erased by billions of years of plate tectonics.
“During this violent era, it wasn’t rain or snow falling from the sky, but an almost constant barrage of molten rock droplets and pulverized dust kicked up by asteroid impacts,” said Jones. “If we can pin down the ages of these layers, it would be like reading a cosmic weather report from 4 billion years ago.”
This orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took from its 2021 landing site in Jezero Crater to the “Broom Point” location in mid-2025.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MRO/HIRISE/UA/ICL More about Perseverance
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Arizona State University leads the operations of the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras. SuperCam is led by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the instrument’s Body Unit was developed. The rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument was built at NASA JPL, and its WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera was built at Malin Space Science Systems.
For more information on NASA’s Perseverance, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
2026-045
Share Details Last Updated Jul 15, 2026 Related Terms Explore More 3 min read NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Wakes from Hibernation in Good HealthFollowing its longest hibernation period ever of nearly a year, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has…
Article 1 week ago 3 min read What’s Up: July 2026 Skywatching Tips from NASAA predawn Moon-and-planets meetup, a returning comet, a great chance to see the Milky Way,…
Article 2 weeks ago 6 min read NASA’s Webb Studies How Planet Survived Death of its StarNASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving us new insight into the far-future of solar…
Article 2 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Mars 2020: Perseverance RoverNASA’s Mars Perseverance rover seeks signs of ancient life and collects samples of rock and regolith for possible Earth return.
Asteroids, Comets & MeteorsAsteroids, comets, and meteoroids are chunks of rock, ice, and metal left over from the formation of our solar system…
Mars ExplorationMars is the only planet we know of inhabited entirely by robots. Learn more about the Mars Missions.
Planetary ScienceNASA’s planetary science program explores the objects in our solar system to better understand its history and the distribution of…
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reads Record of Ancient Mars Impacts
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s Perseverance took this selfie at “Witch Hazel Hill” on Jezero Crater’s rim on May 10, 2025. The small dark hole in the rock in front of the rover is the borehole made when the rover collected the “Bell Island” sample. The small puff of dust left of center and below the horizon line is a dust devil.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSNASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has uncovered evidence that a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) stack of ancient rock on the rim of Jezero Crater was built by repeated asteroid impacts. Referred to as the “Broom Point member” by the rover’s science team, this sequence of layered bedrock is likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making it among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover.
Released Wednesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the findings offer a window into one of the most tumultuous chapters in the history of the solar system.
“Since leaving Jezero, Perseverance has been exploring a brand-new frontier, both geographically and geologically — a chapter of Martian time that predates the crater itself,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance deputy project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “On Earth, our earliest geologic history has been fundamentally broken up, deformed, and erased by plate tectonics. Because Mars lacks plate tectonics to recycle its crust, this ancient record remains intact, giving us a rare glimpse into a geological time period that doesn’t exist on our own planet.”
Reading between layersAfter ascending the western rim of Jezero Crater in late 2024, Perseverance began examining surrounding locations with its science instruments. Their data at Broom Point revealed six distinct rock types, including breccias — rocks composed of angular fragments — alternating with layers of fine-grained, pulverized rock dust. Rock fragments within the breccias are pocked with gas-bubble cavities, indicating they were once molten.
The presence of tiny, dark, glassy beads within the layers offered an important clue about how these rocks formed. While volcanoes can produce similar glassy droplets, they rarely occur in such high abundance, pointing to asteroid impacts, instead, as the primary architect. In fact, the largest beads rival those flung out by the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid’s impact on Earth.
NASA’s Perseverance rover captured its own tracks descending from the rim of Jezero Crater. The bright-colored rocks running from middle left to middle right of the image, a formation dubbed the “Broom Point member,” are likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making them among the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSSThe repetition of these distinct rock types multiple times throughout this thick sequence of rock indicates that high-energy impact events happened again and again across this region of early Mars.
“The different rock layers are a record of variable-sized impacts occurring at different distances from where this rock sequence was accumulating,” said Alex Jones, a Ph.D. student in planetary geology at Imperial College London and lead author of the paper. “Some large impacts took place very far away, some small impacts nearby. Their debris all ended up landing here, constructing this thick section of rock.”
How these layers formed may suggest an interaction with water or ice. Several of the layers look like they may have been formed by fast, ground-hugging debris flows. On Earth, these powerful, fluidlike surges can occur when molten rock hits water or ice that instantly flashes into steam.
Cosmic one-two punchSome of Broom Point’s layers tilt at angles exceeding 80 degrees — nearly vertical — which is far too steep to be caused by the impact that created Jezero Crater.
Instead, scientists suspect a cosmic “one-two punch” shaped this landscape long ago. First, a colossal asteroid impact created the 1,200-mile-wide (1,900-kilometer-wide) Isidis Basin, one of the largest impact basins on Mars, upending and tilting the once-flat rock layers. Later, a second asteroid likely struck, forming Jezero Crater, which measures 28 miles (45 kilometers) across. This second impact fractured and uplifted the already-tilted rocks into the dramatic formations the rover sees today.
To pin down exactly when these events took place, the Perseverance team collected two core samples, dubbed “Bell Island” and “Main River.” If a future mission were to return them to Earth, laboratory dating could determine when and how often impacts were occurring on early Mars — and, by extension, the infant Earth, whose own early impact record has been erased by billions of years of plate tectonics.
“During this violent era, it wasn’t rain or snow falling from the sky, but an almost constant barrage of molten rock droplets and pulverized dust kicked up by asteroid impacts,” said Jones. “If we can pin down the ages of these layers, it would be like reading a cosmic weather report from 4 billion years ago.”
This orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took from its 2021 landing site in Jezero Crater to the “Broom Point” location in mid-2025.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MRO/HIRISE/UA/ICL More about PerseveranceNASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Arizona State University leads the operations of the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras. SuperCam is led by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the instrument’s Body Unit was developed. The rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument was built at NASA JPL, and its WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera was built at Malin Space Science Systems.
For more information on NASA’s Perseverance, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
2026-045
Share Details Last Updated Jul 15, 2026 Related Terms Explore More 3 min read NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Wakes from Hibernation in Good HealthFollowing its longest hibernation period ever of nearly a year, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has…
Article 1 week ago 3 min read What’s Up: July 2026 Skywatching Tips from NASAA predawn Moon-and-planets meetup, a returning comet, a great chance to see the Milky Way,…
Article 2 weeks ago 6 min read NASA’s Webb Studies How Planet Survived Death of its StarNASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving us new insight into the far-future of solar…
Article 2 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Mars 2020: Perseverance RoverNASA’s Mars Perseverance rover seeks signs of ancient life and collects samples of rock and regolith for possible Earth return.
Asteroids, Comets & MeteorsAsteroids, comets, and meteoroids are chunks of rock, ice, and metal left over from the formation of our solar system…
Mars ExplorationMars is the only planet we know of inhabited entirely by robots. Learn more about the Mars Missions.
Planetary ScienceNASA’s planetary science program explores the objects in our solar system to better understand its history and the distribution of…
Trump’s latest CDC chief pick Erica Schwartz faces Senate confirmation hearing
The White House nominated Erica Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general, to head the nation’s top public health agency
Indonesia’s new capital is changing the Borneo rainforest forever. Science is listening to the change
Indonesia is building a new capital city in the heart of Borneo to replace sinking Jakarta. As construction transforms one of the world’s most biodiverse rainforests, scientists and their Indigenous collaborators are racing to record the sounds of the forest—and preserve generations of ecological knowledge before it’s lost.
See the first x-rays of humans taken in space
Equipping spacecraft with x-ray machines could boost safety for long-duration spaceflights—like a crewed mission to Mars
Replay of the online media briefing on the total solar eclipse
ESA experts explain the science of eclipses, including visibility and key opportunities for scientific observation.
Volunteer Measures Record Louisiana Rainfall
“I didn’t sign up to try to measure a new record or anything”, said Matt Carnicle, a volunteer for the NASA-sponsored Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS, project. Carnicle measured a whopping 29.06 inches of rainfall on June 18th, 2026, breaking an all-time 24-hour record for the state of Louisiana of 22.00 inches. “I’m just a regular guy who likes to track the weather, and I report what I get in my gauge whether it’s zero, two hundredths, or whatever is in there when I read it.”
CoCoRaHS (pronounced KO-ko-rozz) is a network of volunteer weather observers of all ages working together to measure and map rain, hail, and snow by measuring precipitation in their backyards. Together, these thousands of daily precipitation reports – openly available on the project website – are used by scientists and citizens for a wide variety of purposes, to include improving weather forecasting, informing water and land management, driving atmospheric models, and triggering flash flood and severe weather warnings.
Matt joined through a storm-spotter class where he learned how CoCoRaHS is part of a NASA hail research project focused on Gulf States in the Southeast United States. CoCoRaHS reports (and photos) of hail are used for researching the “melt rate” between when the satellite estimates the stone sizes in the clouds and what volunteers measure on the ground. Matt took it a step further and purchased a standardized rain gauge in order to participate with CoCoRaHS by measuring rainfall.
Matt’s June 18, 2026 rain measurement shatters Louisiana’s 1962 state record of 22.00 inches of rain in 24-hours (Hawaii holds the national record with 49.69 inches in 24-hours). Even more remarkably, the 29.06 inches he measured fell in less than 12 hours! According to Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes, who validated Matt’s measurement along with National Weather Service representatives, an event of this magnitude in this area is expected to happen less than once in a thousand years. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) committee will convene in the coming months to verify and document the new record.
You can join Matt and other CoCoRaHS volunteers and submit official rainfall reports to the National Weather Service. They’re also on the lookout for hail in the southeast, where CoCoRaHS and NASA are doing research on how hail melts as it moves from the clouds to the ground. The only requirement for participation is that volunteers use the correct manual gauge, which is precise to the nearest 1/100th of an inch and is approved by the National Weather Service (measurements from automated rain gauges are not accepted). Sign up here, and you might measure the next record precipitation event: https://science.nasa.gov/citizen-science/community-collaborative-rain-hail-and-snow-network/
From left to right: National Weather Service Lake Charles Warning Coordination Meteorologist Doug Cramer, National Weather Service Lake Charles meteorologist Jonathan Brazzell, rain gauge owner/observer Matt Carnicle, and Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes. Carnicle’s arm is around the CoCoRaHS rain gauge. https://www.cocorahs.org/Image credit: Matt Carnicle. Learn More and Get Involved Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS)
Join a national community of precipitation reporters providing critical data to improve scientific understanding and forecasts.
Facebook logo @nasascience_ @nasascience_ Instagram logo @nasascience_ Linkedin logo @nasascience_Volunteer Measures Record Louisiana Rainfall
“I didn’t sign up to try to measure a new record or anything”, said Matt Carnicle, a volunteer for the NASA-sponsored Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS, project. Carnicle measured a whopping 29.06 inches of rainfall on June 18th, 2026, breaking an all-time 24-hour record for the state of Louisiana of 22.00 inches. “I’m just a regular guy who likes to track the weather, and I report what I get in my gauge whether it’s zero, two hundredths, or whatever is in there when I read it.”
CoCoRaHS (pronounced KO-ko-rozz) is a network of volunteer weather observers of all ages working together to measure and map rain, hail, and snow by measuring precipitation in their backyards. Together, these thousands of daily precipitation reports – openly available on the project website – are used by scientists and citizens for a wide variety of purposes, to include improving weather forecasting, informing water and land management, driving atmospheric models, and triggering flash flood and severe weather warnings.
Matt joined through a storm-spotter class where he learned how CoCoRaHS is part of a NASA hail research project focused on Gulf States in the Southeast United States. CoCoRaHS reports (and photos) of hail are used for researching the “melt rate” between when the satellite estimates the stone sizes in the clouds and what volunteers measure on the ground. Matt took it a step further and purchased a standardized rain gauge in order to participate with CoCoRaHS by measuring rainfall.
Matt’s June 18, 2026 rain measurement shatters Louisiana’s 1962 state record of 22.00 inches of rain in 24-hours (Hawaii holds the national record with 49.69 inches in 24-hours). Even more remarkably, the 29.06 inches he measured fell in less than 12 hours! According to Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes, who validated Matt’s measurement along with National Weather Service representatives, an event of this magnitude in this area is expected to happen less than once in a thousand years. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) committee will convene in the coming months to verify and document the new record.
You can join Matt and other CoCoRaHS volunteers and submit official rainfall reports to the National Weather Service. They’re also on the lookout for hail in the southeast, where CoCoRaHS and NASA are doing research on how hail melts as it moves from the clouds to the ground. The only requirement for participation is that volunteers use the correct manual gauge, which is precise to the nearest 1/100th of an inch and is approved by the National Weather Service (measurements from automated rain gauges are not accepted). Sign up here, and you might measure the next record precipitation event: https://science.nasa.gov/citizen-science/community-collaborative-rain-hail-and-snow-network/
From left to right: National Weather Service Lake Charles Warning Coordination Meteorologist Doug Cramer, National Weather Service Lake Charles meteorologist Jonathan Brazzell, rain gauge owner/observer Matt Carnicle, and Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes. Carnicle’s arm is around the CoCoRaHS rain gauge. https://www.cocorahs.org/Image credit: Matt Carnicle. Learn More and Get Involved Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS)Join a national community of precipitation reporters providing critical data to improve scientific understanding and forecasts.
Facebook logo @nasascience_ @nasascience_ Instagram logo @nasascience_ Linkedin logo @nasascience_Astronomers just accidentally spotted the faintest exoplanet ever seen from Earth
Beta Pictoris d is more than twice the size of Jupiter, but it is a baby compared to its humongous neighbors
NASA’s Webb Discovers Hidden Planet in Famous Star System
- Webb
- News
- Overview
- Science
- Observatory
- Multimedia
- Team
- More
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a giant planet outside our solar system, called an exoplanet, hiding within one of the most intensely studied planetary systems in our Milky Way galaxy.
The young, nearby star Beta Pictoris was already known to host two giant planets: Beta Pictoris b, one of the first exoplanets ever directly imaged, and Beta Pictoris c. The newly identified Beta Pictoris d makes it only the second planetary system known to contain at least three imaged planets. Unlike Beta Pictoris b and c, however, Beta Pictoris d was discovered not by identifying a bright point of light, but by detecting the unique chemical fingerprint of its atmosphere, a technique that could transform the search for worlds around other stars.
“This discovery adds another piece to an already fascinating planetary system,” said Aidan Gibbs, lead author of a new study published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “Beta Pictoris has long served as a laboratory for understanding how planetary systems form and evolve, and now we have another planet helping us tell that story.”
Image: Beta Pictoris System (Artist’s Concept) This artist’s concept shows the Beta Pictoris system with the discovered giant exoplanet Beta Pictoris d at the right. It has the widest orbit of the known three exoplanets within the system.Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI) Familiar system, new surprise
Located 63 light-years from Earth and about 23 million years old, Beta Pictoris is a nearby system in the Milky Way offering a rare glimpse of the interactions between newborn planets and the disk of dust and debris left behind from their formation.
The team estimates that the newfound Beta Pictoris d is likely at least two times the mass of Jupiter, making it the smallest of the three known giant planets in the system. Modeling suggests it likely circles around its star at about 30 astronomical units, comparable to the region occupied by Neptune in our own solar system. It’s the widest orbit of the known three planets, but still located inside the inner edge of the debris disk.
Although astronomers were not searching for another planet with Webb, Beta Pictoris d emerged while the team was using the telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to study the atmosphere of Beta Pictoris b. Specifically, they used NIRSpec’s Integral Field Unit, which obtains both an image and a spectrum from each pixel in an image.
“We weren’t looking for a new planet,” said Gibbs. “We were trying to understand one we already knew existed. Then, this telltale signal appeared in the data where we didn’t expect it.”
This signal was a series of peaks and troughs within the spectroscopic data where the team expected to see a smooth spectrum from light bouncing off dust. It was a distinctive pattern of carbon monoxide absorption lines, spread out like a barcode, an expected feature in giant planet atmospheres.
Because spectroscopy not only reveals chemical composition, but the motion of an object, the team was able to also extract radial velocity from the data. The team determined the planet’s speed, position, and alignment with the debris disk were all consistent with something orbiting Beta Pictoris rather than a background star or brown dwarf with carbon monoxide in its atmosphere.
“There was an unexpected bright source of light within the Integral Field Unit imaging, but we’ve learned not to trust bright blobs in images,” said Jean-Baptiste Ruffio, a research scientist at University of California, San Diego and principal investigator of the first Webb observations where the discovery was made. “They can be instrumental artifacts or other structures in the debris disk. By obtaining a spectrum at the same time as the image, we were able to quickly confirm our suspicions.”
Follow-up observations with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) through a Director’s Discretionary Time request detected water vapor and methane, further confirming the planet’s identity while providing a richer look at the atmosphere of the planet.
Unlike traditional imaging, the spectroscopic approach allowed researchers to identify the planet and begin studying its atmosphere from the very first observation.
“A spectrum contains an incredible amount of information,” Ruffio said. “You don’t just learn that something is a planet; you immediately begin learning about its temperature, chemistry, and motion.”
A separate imaging study led by Ben Sutlieff of the University of Edinburgh and Markus Bonse of the European Southern Observatory complements the team’s findings with data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and independently confirmed the existence of Beta Pictoris d.
Image: Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image and Spectrum) Researchers used the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) Integral Field Unit on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map chemical contents of the Beta Pictoris system. As a result, they discovered a third planet, Beta Pictoris d, orbiting the young star.Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Leah Hustak (STScI); Science: Aidan Gibbs (UC San Diego), Jean-Baptiste Ruffio (UC San Diego), Alexis Bidot (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Image: Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image Annotated) The newly discovered third planet orbiting Beta Pictoris, Beta Pictoris d, is seen in reconstructed imagery from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph).Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Science: Aidan Gibbs (UC San Diego), Jean-Baptiste Ruffio (UC San Diego); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Seeing through cosmic fog
Beta Pictoris d remained hidden for years because it lies within one of the brightest debris disks known.
The dusty disk acts like fog, scattering light from the star, making it difficult for conventional imaging techniques to distinguish planets from surrounding structures. The team’s spectroscopic method with Webb effectively ignored that dust, isolating only the narrow molecular signatures unique to a planetary atmosphere.
Scientists say the planet’s presence may help explain why the famous debris disk has such a sharply defined inner edge and other puzzling structures. In fact, astronomers had already predicted the existence of a planet like Beta Pictoris d to account for the disk’s unusual structure.
Beyond expanding our understanding of Beta Pictoris, the discovery demonstrates a powerful new way to find exoplanets.
This is the first directly imaged planet discovered primarily through moderate-resolution spectroscopy, showing that astronomers can identify worlds in complex environments through their atmospheric fingerprints rather than relying solely on traditional coronagraphic imaging.
The researchers plan to continue analyzing Webb’s observations to better determine the planet’s temperature, atmospheric composition, and orbit, providing an even more detailed view of one of astronomy’s most iconic planetary systems.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
To learn more about Webb, visit:
Downloads & Related InformationThe following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
Related Images & Videos Beta Pictoris System (Artist’s Concept)This artist’s concept shows the Beta Pictoris system with the discovered giant exoplanet Beta Pictoris d at the right. It has the widest orbit of the known three exoplanets within the system.
Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image and Spectrum)Researchers used the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) Integral Field Unit on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map chemical contents of the Beta Pictoris system. As a result, they discovered a third planet, Beta Pictoris d, orbiting the young star.
Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image Annotated)The newly discovered third planet orbiting Beta Pictoris, Beta Pictoris d, is seen in reconstructed imagery from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph).
Related LinksRead more: Webb’s Impact on Exoplanet Research
Read more: NASA’s Webb Discovers Dusty ‘Cat’s Tail’ in Beta Pictoris System
Explore more: Beta Pictoris: Icy Debris Suggests ‘Shepherd’ Planet
Watch: How to Study Exoplanets: Webb and Challenges
Watch: How Do Space Telescopes Break Down Light?
More Webb: News | Images | Science | Home Page
Share Details Last Updated Jul 15, 2026 LocationNASA Goddard Space Flight Center Contact MediaLaura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…
Exoplanets
Exoplanet Stories
Universe
NASA’s Webb Discovers Hidden Planet in Famous Star System
- Webb
- News
- Overview
- Science
- Observatory
- Multimedia
- Team
- More
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a giant planet outside our solar system, called an exoplanet, hiding within one of the most intensely studied planetary systems in our Milky Way galaxy.
The young, nearby star Beta Pictoris was already known to host two giant planets: Beta Pictoris b, one of the first exoplanets ever directly imaged, and Beta Pictoris c. The newly identified Beta Pictoris d makes it only the second planetary system known to contain at least three imaged planets. Unlike Beta Pictoris b and c, however, Beta Pictoris d was discovered not by identifying a bright point of light, but by detecting the unique chemical fingerprint of its atmosphere, a technique that could transform the search for worlds around other stars.
“This discovery adds another piece to an already fascinating planetary system,” said Aidan Gibbs, lead author of a new study published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “Beta Pictoris has long served as a laboratory for understanding how planetary systems form and evolve, and now we have another planet helping us tell that story.”
Image: Beta Pictoris System (Artist’s Concept) This artist’s concept shows the Beta Pictoris system with the discovered giant exoplanet Beta Pictoris d at the right. It has the widest orbit of the known three exoplanets within the system.Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI) Familiar system, new surpriseLocated 63 light-years from Earth and about 23 million years old, Beta Pictoris is a nearby system in the Milky Way offering a rare glimpse of the interactions between newborn planets and the disk of dust and debris left behind from their formation.
The team estimates that the newfound Beta Pictoris d is likely at least two times the mass of Jupiter, making it the smallest of the three known giant planets in the system. Modeling suggests it likely circles around its star at about 30 astronomical units, comparable to the region occupied by Neptune in our own solar system. It’s the widest orbit of the known three planets, but still located inside the inner edge of the debris disk.
Although astronomers were not searching for another planet with Webb, Beta Pictoris d emerged while the team was using the telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to study the atmosphere of Beta Pictoris b. Specifically, they used NIRSpec’s Integral Field Unit, which obtains both an image and a spectrum from each pixel in an image.
“We weren’t looking for a new planet,” said Gibbs. “We were trying to understand one we already knew existed. Then, this telltale signal appeared in the data where we didn’t expect it.”
This signal was a series of peaks and troughs within the spectroscopic data where the team expected to see a smooth spectrum from light bouncing off dust. It was a distinctive pattern of carbon monoxide absorption lines, spread out like a barcode, an expected feature in giant planet atmospheres.
Because spectroscopy not only reveals chemical composition, but the motion of an object, the team was able to also extract radial velocity from the data. The team determined the planet’s speed, position, and alignment with the debris disk were all consistent with something orbiting Beta Pictoris rather than a background star or brown dwarf with carbon monoxide in its atmosphere.
“There was an unexpected bright source of light within the Integral Field Unit imaging, but we’ve learned not to trust bright blobs in images,” said Jean-Baptiste Ruffio, a research scientist at University of California, San Diego and principal investigator of the first Webb observations where the discovery was made. “They can be instrumental artifacts or other structures in the debris disk. By obtaining a spectrum at the same time as the image, we were able to quickly confirm our suspicions.”
Follow-up observations with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) through a Director’s Discretionary Time request detected water vapor and methane, further confirming the planet’s identity while providing a richer look at the atmosphere of the planet.
Unlike traditional imaging, the spectroscopic approach allowed researchers to identify the planet and begin studying its atmosphere from the very first observation.
“A spectrum contains an incredible amount of information,” Ruffio said. “You don’t just learn that something is a planet; you immediately begin learning about its temperature, chemistry, and motion.”
A separate imaging study led by Ben Sutlieff of the University of Edinburgh and Markus Bonse of the European Southern Observatory complements the team’s findings with data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and independently confirmed the existence of Beta Pictoris d.
Image: Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image and Spectrum) Researchers used the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) Integral Field Unit on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map chemical contents of the Beta Pictoris system. As a result, they discovered a third planet, Beta Pictoris d, orbiting the young star.Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Leah Hustak (STScI); Science: Aidan Gibbs (UC San Diego), Jean-Baptiste Ruffio (UC San Diego), Alexis Bidot (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Image: Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image Annotated) The newly discovered third planet orbiting Beta Pictoris, Beta Pictoris d, is seen in reconstructed imagery from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph).Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Science: Aidan Gibbs (UC San Diego), Jean-Baptiste Ruffio (UC San Diego); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Seeing through cosmic fogBeta Pictoris d remained hidden for years because it lies within one of the brightest debris disks known.
The dusty disk acts like fog, scattering light from the star, making it difficult for conventional imaging techniques to distinguish planets from surrounding structures. The team’s spectroscopic method with Webb effectively ignored that dust, isolating only the narrow molecular signatures unique to a planetary atmosphere.
Scientists say the planet’s presence may help explain why the famous debris disk has such a sharply defined inner edge and other puzzling structures. In fact, astronomers had already predicted the existence of a planet like Beta Pictoris d to account for the disk’s unusual structure.
Beyond expanding our understanding of Beta Pictoris, the discovery demonstrates a powerful new way to find exoplanets.
This is the first directly imaged planet discovered primarily through moderate-resolution spectroscopy, showing that astronomers can identify worlds in complex environments through their atmospheric fingerprints rather than relying solely on traditional coronagraphic imaging.
The researchers plan to continue analyzing Webb’s observations to better determine the planet’s temperature, atmospheric composition, and orbit, providing an even more detailed view of one of astronomy’s most iconic planetary systems.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
To learn more about Webb, visit:
Downloads & Related InformationThe following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
Related Images & Videos Beta Pictoris System (Artist’s Concept)This artist’s concept shows the Beta Pictoris system with the discovered giant exoplanet Beta Pictoris d at the right. It has the widest orbit of the known three exoplanets within the system.
Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image and Spectrum)Researchers used the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) Integral Field Unit on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map chemical contents of the Beta Pictoris system. As a result, they discovered a third planet, Beta Pictoris d, orbiting the young star.
Beta Pictoris System (NIRSpec IFU Image Annotated)The newly discovered third planet orbiting Beta Pictoris, Beta Pictoris d, is seen in reconstructed imagery from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph).
Related LinksRead more: Webb’s Impact on Exoplanet Research
Read more: NASA’s Webb Discovers Dusty ‘Cat’s Tail’ in Beta Pictoris System
Explore more: Beta Pictoris: Icy Debris Suggests ‘Shepherd’ Planet
Watch: How to Study Exoplanets: Webb and Challenges
Watch: How Do Space Telescopes Break Down Light?
More Webb: News | Images | Science | Home Page
Share Details Last Updated Jul 15, 2026 LocationNASA Goddard Space Flight Center Contact MediaLaura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…
Exoplanets
Exoplanet Stories
Universe
August's solar eclipse inspires science involving jets, balloons and Einstein’s general theory of relativity
Solar eclipses are a rare and brief opportunity for scientists to gather data on everything from the physics of the sun to air pressure in the upper atmosphere
Metallic waves on ancient Mars
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express has spotted a swathe of metallic-looking waves filling Mars’s large Kaiser Crater – an ancient and otherworldly dune field sculpted by wind.