The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first previously unknown exoplanet, TWA 7b, using the Mid-Infrared Instrument’s coronagraph, researchers reported in Nature on 25 June 2025. The observation marks Webb’s inaugural discovery made through direct imaging rather than follow-up study of systems found by earlier missions. TWA 7b is a young gas-giant with a mass comparable to Saturn—about 100 times that of Earth—and orbits the red-dwarf star TWA 7 at roughly 52 astronomical units. The star–planet system, located in the constellation Antlia some 100 light-years away, is estimated to be just six million years old. At one-tenth the mass of the previous record holder, TWA 7b is the least-massive exoplanet ever imaged directly, underscoring JWST’s sensitivity to smaller, cooler worlds situated far from their host stars—a regime that had eluded earlier telescopes. “Webb opens a new window on exoplanets that had not been accessible to observations so far,” said lead author Anne-Marie Lagrange of CNRS. The breakthrough expands prospects for studying how planetary systems form and for eventually spotting Earth-sized planets in similar wide orbits.