The AEI plays a leading role in the development of LISA’s key instruments

Artist's impression of the LISA mission satellites in the solar system observing gravitational waves from a distant galaxy.
Credit: University of Florida / Simon Barke (CC BY 4.0)

This picture shows a Back-End Electronics (BEE) module of LISA’s Phasemeter during tests with simulated signals in the Interferometric Signal Processing Lab at the AEI Hannover. In LISA, the BEE tracks signals from each satellite’s optical bench, containing information about the passing gravitational waves. © Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI)

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To the point:

• Preparations for LISA: LISA is a space-based observatory for gravitational waves and a mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) with contributions from NASA. It is scheduled to launch into space in the 2030s and will gather entirely new information about the Universe. The satellites and their high-precision measurement instruments are currently being developed.


• Scientific expertise: The AEI is receiving a grant from the DLR. Under this grant, the institute is entrusted with leading the development of key LISA instruments as well as the investigation and verification of additional components through 2030. The grant totals 35 million euros.


• Next steps for the phasemeter: On behalf of and under the leadership of the AEI, OHB Systems AG will develop and manufacture the engineering models, qualification models, and flight hardware for one component of the phasemeter. The phasemeter is LISA’s central measuring instrument.

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The AEI receives a grant totaling 35 million euros from the DLR to develop key components of the instruments for the satellite mission

"This grant underscores the leading role of our institute and that of the Max Planck Society in the development of LISA, the European Space Agency’s gravitational-wave observatory

Guido Müller, director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI)

Scientific expertise at the AEI

“The grant strengthens the scientific expertise – grown over decades – at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in the development, investigation, and verification of methods and instruments for gravitational-wave observation in space,” says Jens Reiche Program Manager for space projects at the AEI.

With this latest grant of 35 million euros, the German Space Agency at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is funding the next phase of development of instruments for LISA’s optical measurement system at the AEI. Additional funding for subsequent project phases has already been planned.

The funding is being provided as part of the implementation phase: The AEI is initially responsible for developing and providing the engineering models of the phasemeter – which is classified as mission-critical – and its signal processing within the optical measurement system. This includes extensive testing, encompassing all relevant interfaces

Next steps for the phasemeter

The LISA phasemeter is the heart of this measurement system. It will measure the minute changes in the laser light imprinted by gravitational waves in the laser beams as they travel back and forth over millions of kilometers between the three LISA satellites. Therefore, the phasemeter is the instrument that will detect gravitational waves and thereby enable a new era of astronomy.

The AEI is responsible for the phasemeter’s hardware and software and their verification. To this end, the institute will develop and operate mathematical models, simulators, and experiments.

“On our behalf and under our leadership, our industry partner OHB Systems AG is developing and manufacturing the engineering models, qualification models, and flight hardware for one of the two components of the phase meter,” says Kanioar Karan, the project manager for phasemeter development at AEI.

The institute also organizes and supports the verification of the LISA measurement system and manages its interaction with other components of the satellite hardware. To this end, the AEI develops and operates technical models of the instruments and simulators, as well as various experimental setups. Using these setups, scientists at the AEI will test the functionality of several components of the satellite hardware and verify whether they meet the strict requirements for measurement accuracy. These experimental setups in the institute’s laboratories could also help during commissioning of LISA in space following its launch in the 2030s.

Preparing for LISA measurements

In addition, researchers at the AEI will work with ESA to further develop methods for LISA’s science operations. The goal is to analyze the LISA measurement data after launch and commissioning in the 2030s and to derive as many scientific insights from them as possible. To this end, the scientists will develop and operate models and simulators of LISA instruments and will develop and refine new methods for analyzing the LISA data.

“Beyond basic research and its application in astronomy with LISA, the AEI also supports technology transfer to industry,” says Guido Müller. “The insights and experience gained from our research on high-precision, laser-based measurements are intended to enable novel technical applications.”

Background information

LISA

LISA will be the first gravitational-wave observatory in space. It will consist of three satellites that will move in a triangular configuration – connected by 2.5 million kilometer-long arms of laser light – in an Earth-like orbit around the Sun.

LISA will be able to detect gravitational waves from sources throughout the Universe, going back almost to the Big Bang. These gravitational waves will cause tiny changes (smaller than the diameter of an atom) in the laser arms. LISA will measure these length changes by using laser light to monitor the movements of test masses that are in free fall inside the satellites.

LISA research at the AEI

The institute has LISA research groups at its locations in Hanover and Potsdam. It plays a leading role in the development of key hardware components, research into laser interferometry for LISA, and in source modeling, data analysis, and the application of scientific results.

Gravitational-wave astronomy with LISA

Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime that arise when masses are accelerated. Current detectors on Earth measure gravitational waves originating from merging pairs of neutron stars and black holes with masses of up to several hundred solar masses.

LISA will detect gravitational waves in the as-yet unexplored window between 0.1 mHz and 1 Hz – at frequencies that detectors on Earth cannot observe. Waves in this frequency range are generated when black holes with masses ranging from about 10,000 to 100 million times that of the Sun collide and merge at the centers of distant young galaxies. LISA will detect these processes throughout the history of the Universe, thereby directly investigating the as-yet-unknown origin and growth of extremely massive black holes.

What makes LISA unique is its ability to detect gravitational waves originating from black holes with masses ranging from about 100 to 10,000 solar masses that orbit massive black holes in galactic centers. These signals allow us to study the geometry of spacetime and test the nature of gravity. LISA will not only detect a large number of binary and multiple systems of compact objects in our Milky Way – which will provide insights into the evolution of binary stars – but will also “see” the galaxy beyond the galactic center. This includes many objects that are invisible to all other astronomical instruments.

Since LISA uses gravity as a signal source, the mission will complete our understanding of the origin, evolution, and structure of our Universe. The study of gravitational waves also offers enormous potential for discovering previously inaccessible parts of the Universe; these include, among other things, the echo of the Big Bang (ripples in spacetime caused by disturbances in the plasma shortly after the Big Bang) and other, as yet unknown phenomena. Together with other astronomical methods and gravitational-wave observatories on Earth, LISA researchers will contribute to the next major discoveries to answer questions such as “What are the fundamental laws of the Universe?” and “How did the Universe come into being, and what is it made of?”

Source: Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics/News

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Media contact:

Dr. Benjamin Knispel
Press Officer AEI Hannover
Tel: +49 511 762-19104
Email: benjamin.knispel@aei.mpg.de

Prof. Dr. Guido Müller
Managing Director
Tel: +49 511 762-12424
Email:  guido.mueller@aei.mpg.de
v Dr. Jens Reiche
Project Leader
Tel: +49 511 762-12130
Tel: +49 511 762-5844
Email:  jens.reiche@aei.mpg.de

Dr. Kanioar Karan
Project Manager
Tel: +49 511 762-12181
Email:  kanioar.karan@aei.mpg.de

Dr. Ada Agnieszka Uminska
Project Leader
Tel: +49 511 762-14059
Email:  guido.mueller@aei.mpg.de

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Further information

Aeneas Rooch: LISA listens to space (MaxPlanckResearch 2/2024)>

The largest astronomical observatory is so large that it won’t fit on Earth. It’s called LISA, and it will be able to detect when a 2.5-million-kilometer segment of space shrinks by even one atomic diameter. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hanover and Potsdam helped develop the gravitational-wave detector. By observing cosmic waves, they hope to gain an insight into strange processes deep in outer space.

Observing gravitational waves in space with LISA

Benjamin Knispel, “Observing gravitational waves in space with LISA” in: Einstein Online Band 15 (2024), 1001

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First observational signature of ambipolar diffusion in prestellar core L1544

llustration of ion-neutral drift in the L1544 prestellar core. The blue lines represent the magnetic field lines, which are bent due to the gravitational contraction of the core. The red and green dots depict the ion and neutral molecular species, respectively, and the arrows trace their inflow motion towards the core center (the faster they travel the longer the arrows). While in the outer part of the core both the ions and neutrals are attached to the magnetic field lines, within the inner part of the core the neutrals decouple from the magnetic field lines and infall faster compared to the ions, which remain attached to the field lines. This ion-neutral decoupling known as ambipolar diffusion is required for the onset of the gravitational collapse of the prestellar core, which will produce a protostar in its center and ultimately a stellar system similar to our own Solar System. Credit: Y. Nakamura & D. Arzoumanian/Kyushu University

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To the Point

• An international team, including MPE researchers, has found the first observational signature of ambipolar diffusion in a prestellar core.


• The result is based on high-resolution spectral observations of the dense core L1544 with the IRAM 30-meter telescope.


• The team detected a small but systematic velocity offset between an ion and a neutral molecule that traces nearly the same gas.


• The finding offers a new way to test theories of how magnetic fields regulate the earliest stages of star formation.


• Future observations could test whether similar signatures appear in other prestellar cores and help constrain magnetic fields, geometry, chemistry, and dust growth.

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An international team with major contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) has found the first observational signature consistent with ambipolar diffusion in a prestellar core. Using high spectral resolution observations with the IRAM 30-meter telescope, the researchers detected a small but systematic velocity difference between ionized and neutral gas in L1544, a prototypical dense core in the Taurus molecular cloud.

The result addresses one of the central questions in star-formation research: how gravity and magnetic fields interact in the earliest phases of collapse. In dense molecular gas, ions remain coupled to magnetic fields, while neutral molecules can move more freely. Ambipolar diffusion describes the gradual decoupling of these components, allowing neutral gas to drift inward while charged particles remain coupled to the magnetic field. Until now, this process had been predicted by theory and simulations but had not been directly identified in a prestellar core.

“L1544 gives us a rare opportunity to study the interplay between magnetic fields and collapsing gas at a very early stage,” says Tommaso Grassi of MPE. “The data reveal a small but systematic relative motion between ions and neutrals — exactly the kind of signature expected if ambipolar diffusion is at work.” How the team detected the effect

L1544 is a prototypical prestellar core: cold, dense, gravitationally bound, and still without a protostar. That makes it an ideal laboratory for studying the physical conditions just before star birth. At such low temperatures, however, many common molecular tracers freeze onto dust grains, making them difficult to observe. The team therefore selected two molecules that probe similar dense regions of the core: the molecular ion N2D+ and the neutral molecule para-NH2D.

“This is a powerful example of what becomes possible when the right target is observed with very high spectral resolution and carefully matched tracers,” says Silvia Spezzano, Max Planck Research Group Leader at MPE. “It provides a direct observational probe of a process that has long been central to star-formation theory.”

What the observations reveal

The observations reveal a mean ion-neutral velocity offset of about 0.05 km/s. In a cold, slowly evolving prestellar core, this is a very small number — but one that is physically meaningful and consistent with the drift expected when ions and neutrals begin to decouple during gravitational collapse. The analysis also shows that the two tracers have similar spatial distributions, strengthening the case that they sample nearly the same gas and that the measured velocity difference reflects a real physical effect rather than a difference in the layers being traced.

At the same time, the authors are careful not to overstate the result. Geometry, projection effects, and the internal structure of the core all influence what can be seen along the line of sight. The study also does not detect a significant difference in linewidth between the ion and neutral species. For that reason, the result should be seen as strong evidence for ambipolar diffusion, not as final proof.

What comes next

Future observations with higher spatial and spectral resolution could test whether similar signatures appear in other prestellar cores and how they vary across a core’s structure. They could also help disentangle the roles of ambipolar diffusion, geometry, chemistry, and dust growth in shaping the collapse process. If ion-neutral drift velocities can be measured more broadly, they may become a new diagnostic for magnetic field strength and the physical conditions that regulate star formation.

For MPE, the study highlights the institute’s role in precision astrophysics at the frontier of star-formation research. For the field more broadly, it provides one of the clearest observational tests of a process that has shaped theory for decades but has been difficult to capture directly.

“This study highlights the remarkable synergy between astronomy, astrochemistry, and laboratory spectroscopy," says Paola Caselli, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. "Detecting velocity differences of only a few tens of meters per second is possible only because laboratory measurements have established molecular transition frequencies with extraordinary precision. These advances now allow us to probe subtle physical processes, such as ambipolar diffusion, that govern the earliest stages of star formation, just before a new star is born.”

Source: Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics/Press Releases

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Contacts:

Dr. Silvia Spezzano
Max Planck Research Group Leader - CAS
Tel: +49 89 30000-3513
Email: spezzano@mpe.mpg.de
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching

Dr. Tommaso Grassi
Scientist
Tel: +49 89 30000-3639
Email: tgrassi@mpe.mpg.de
Center for Astrochemical Studies

Prof. Dr. Paola Caselli
Director of the Center for Astrochemical Studies (CAS)
Tel: +49 89 30000-3400
Fax: +49 89 30000-3399
Email: caselli@mpe.mpg.de
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching

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Original Publication

1. Arzoumanian, D., S. Spezzano, T. Grassi, P.Caselli, Y. Tsukamoto, H. Fukihara, Y. Misugi, F. Alves, J. Pineda, S.Jensen, E. Redaelli, and A. Ivlev

Probing the ion-neutral drift velocity towards the L1544
prestellar core: Detection of ambipolar diffusion using N₂D⁺ and para-NH₂D
A & A

Source | DOI

2. Grassi, T. , J.E. Pineda, S. Spezzano, D. Arzoumanian, F. Lique, Y. Misugi, E. Redaelli, S. S. Jensen, P. Caselli
A differentiable and optimizable 3D model for interpretation of observed spectral data cubes
A & A

Source | DOI

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Further Information

Recreating the Cosmos: Modeling Sulfur Chemistry in Interstellar Ice Analogues

May 12, 2026

In a new study led by the Center for Astrochemical Studies (CAS) and conducted in collaboration with the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid, MPE scientists combined laboratory experiments and advanced computer modeling to investigate how sulfur-bearing molecules evolve on icy grains in interstellar space.

A chemically rich outflow from a young Sun-like star: A new laboratory for shock chemistry

March 13, 2026

Conditions suitable for life on distant moons

March 11, 2026

Even in the darkness of space, life could be possible: A team of researchers from the ORIGINS Cluster has shown that moons of free-floating planets can keep their oceans liquid for billions of years.

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Sharpest map yet of a galaxy’s heavy elements shows how black holes shape galaxies

An artist's concept of an active galactic nucleus and its central black hole.
Credit: NASA’ Goddard Space Flight Center’s Conceptual Image Lab - High Resolution Image

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Using Hubble and the Very Large Telescope, astronomers link super‑solar metallicity to active galactic nucleus jets and winds, showing how supermassive black holes redistribute heavy elements through their host galaxies

Astronomers have mapped the distribution of heavy elements around a supermassive black hole in unprecedented detail, and the results show that metal‑rich gas is closely linked to the black hole’s powerful activity.

Led by Dominika Król, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, a team of astronomers combined observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to build the most detailed metallicity map ever created of a galaxy region dominated by an active galactic nucleus, usually dubbed AGN,- linked emission. An AGN is AN extremely bright, compact region at the center of a galaxy powered by the accretion onto the supermassive black hole.

“When we think about galaxy evolution, a very important part of it is active galactic nuclei,” said Król. “We know that there are certain differences between the observed distribution of galaxy luminosities and what’s predicted by theory. And we believe that that’s because AGNs are impacting them.”

A supermassive black hole impact on the chemical abundances

Active galaxies are powered by supermassive black holes that launch intense radiation, winds, and sometimes jets that carve out regions of ionized gas and can strongly influence how a host galaxy evolves in a process called AGN feedback.

In astronomical terms, “metals” are all elements other than hydrogen and helium. Most of them are produced inside stars, through nuclear fusion during the course of star evolution, and most of the heaviest are created in supernova explosions. Thus far, most studies of metal abundances in galaxies have focused on regions lit up by star formation, where young stars ionize the surrounding gas. In the case of AGN most studies measure how metallicity changes with distance from the center.

Król’s team instead used the MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope to characterize the conditions in the AGN‑dominated gas. They then applied recently developed diagnostics to high‑resolution images from the Hubble Space Telescope to create a metallicity map across the galaxy. This approach allowed them to resolve small structures rather than averaging over large regions.

“People have done a lot of very detailed studies of the metallicities in star‑forming galaxies, but the question is how the metallicity looks in AGN‑dominated regions,” Król explained.

Super‑solar metals tied to AGN structures

The map shows that regions dominated by the AGN’s influence have what are called super-solar metallicities, or metal richness about two to three times the heavy‑element content of the Sun. These metal‑rich areas line up almost perfectly with the emission linked to the AGN: jets seen in radio frequencies and hot gas visible in X-ray images taken with the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

The team does not see evidence for ongoing star formation in the same areas, strengthening the case that the metals were not produced locally by young stars and supernovae. Instead, the results suggest that metal‑rich material has been transported into the biconical-shaped AGN regions, probably by outflows launched near the black hole’s accretion disk.

Recent theoretical work shows that dense parts of disks around supermassive black holes may form stars that then enrich the disk with heavy elements when they die. Strong AGN winds could then carry that enriched gas out into the host galaxy. The astronomers showed that the winds would have enough power to move the metal‑rich material into the observed regions.

Rethinking what black holes do to galaxies

The finding adds a new chemical dimension to the traditional picture of AGN feedback, which has mostly emphasized how black holes quench star formation by removing or heating gas.

“The thing which surprised me is how well the metals were tracing X-ray and radio images,” added Król. “Sometimes we see different correlations, but this one was so straightforward that I was pretty surprised.”

The work focuses on one well‑observed galaxy, but Król and her colleagues are now extending their analysis to more AGN host galaxies. By comparing metallicity patterns with properties like jet power, wind strength, and X‑ray luminosity, they hope to learn when and how often AGN can reshape their surroundings.

“What’s amazing is that we’re able to resolve these regions in these relatively close galaxies, but they are still unimaginably far away,” Król said. “I think it’s absolutely amazing that we’re able to resolve it.”

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)/News

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About the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory designed to ask, and ultimately answer, humanity’s greatest unresolved questions about the universe.

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Contact Information:

Christine Buckley
Director of Communications
617-599-9628
christine.buckley@cfa.harvard.edu

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NASA’s Webb Discovers Hidden Planet in Famous Star System

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. Credit Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

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. Credid 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)

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). Credit Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Science: Aidan Gibbs (UC San Diego), Jean-Baptiste Ruffio (UC San Diego); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

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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."

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.

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).

Source: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope/Mission

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Details:

Last Updated: Jul 15, 2026
Location: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Contact Media:

Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov

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A Wave of Ancient Quasars from the Dawn of the Universe

15 of the 31 quasars discovered, the small dots at the center of each tile, with their names and redshift (z). Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by the Euclid Science Ground Segment and Antoine Basset (CNES).

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Keck Observatory and ESA’s Euclid mission double the known population, including the two most distant quasars ever found

Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers using the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island, have confirmed two-thirds (21 of 31) of the most ancient quasars from the Euclid mission, including two of the most distant ever observed.

Quasars represent a brief phase in a galaxy’s life during which large amounts of material spiral into the central supermassive black hole, releasing enormous amounts of energy. In this phase, the galaxy’s nucleus can become one of the brightest persistent sources in the Universe.

Astronomers have been hunting for the Universe’s earliest quasars for decades. These celestial archives reveal conditions in the earliest days of the cosmos, including how the first supermassive black holes and galaxies took shape. But accessing them isn’t easy. Quasars from this era are difficult to find: they are elusive, as few galaxies had time to grow large enough, and their light has traveled for more than 13 billion years to reach us, arriving faint and stretched into infrared wavelengths, where it can resemble nearby cool stars.

“We see these quasars as they were during the Universe’s infancy,” says Daming Yang, lead author of the study and graduate student at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “By finding and studying them, we can better understand how these enormous systems formed and grew so quickly – one of the greatest mysteries in astrophysics.”

The study, led by an international team in the Euclid consortium, is published in today’s issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Confirming Ancient Quasars

The 31 quasars reported here were selected from ESA’s Euclid Wide Survey, which will cover more than one-third of the total sky once complete. While the Euclid mission identified promising candidates, confirming them required follow-up spectroscopy from ground-based observatories.

To confirm these quasars spanning redshifts from 6.5 and beyond, the team used three instruments at Keck Observatory, covering a broad wavelength range: the Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration (MOSFIRE), the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS), and the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI). With these instruments, the team analyzed the light from more than 100 candidates in the northern sky, searching each one for a telltale signature: a sharp drop in brightness known as the Lyman-alpha break. This cutoff is imprinted by hydrogen gas that pervaded the early universe, which absorbed the quasar’s light at specific wavelengths before it could reach us. The precise location of that drop confirms the object as a genuine quasar and pins down its distance.

The challenge is that these quasars appear incredibly faint due to their extreme distances, so detecting this signal requires the combination of highly sensitive instruments and the light-gathering capability of the world’s largest ground-based telescopes, such as Keck Observatory.

An elusive and distant population

Before Euclid, astronomers had identified only a handful of quasars at redshift 7 or higher after decades of searching — a measure of distance tied to how light stretches as the universe expands — corresponding to the first 770 million years after the Big Bang. Finding more and pushing further into the early universe is extraordinarily challenging for several reasons: so early in cosmic history, very few galaxies had grown large enough to power them; those that existed are so far away that their light has been travelling for over 13 billion years, arriving incredibly dim; and over that vast journey, the light has been stretched into infrared wavelengths, invisible to traditional optical telescopes.

The mission has already uncovered 12 new quasars above redshift 7, more than doubling the known population. For the first time, astronomers have a large enough sample to study these ancient quasars not as individual curiosities but as a population, building the first statistical picture of how supermassive black holes formed and grew in the Universe’s earliest epochs.

The two most ancient of the batch, EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 and EUCL J125308.55+705432.3, have redshifts of 7.77 and 7.69, respectively, setting a new record for the most ancient quasars ever found. Both lie more than 13 billion light-years away and emerged during the Universe’s first 670 million years.

Building a quasar chronicle

A multi-wavelength follow-up study of all high redshift quasars is currently underway. Using a collection of ground and space-based telescopes the team is constructing a quasar chronicle that will trace how supermassive black holes and their host galaxies evolved over the first billion years of cosmic history, and how reionization unfolded.

“We have a real sample at such high redshift for the first time, and we can finally start answering the questions that were unanswerable before,” said Yang.

“Every one of these 31 quasars is a new sightline into the early Universe, and the follow up science is just beginning” added Joseph Hennawi, co-author and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

As the ESA Euclid space telescope continues to scan new sky, the probability of finding the first quasars beyond redshift 8 increases. A redshift 8 quasar would be shining when the Universe was less than about 630 million years old and would also place the strongest direct constraints yet on how early supermassive black holes could have formed and grown.

A Wave of Ancient Quasars Discovered from the Dawn of the Universe
Artist’s animation depicting a wave of ancient quasars discovered from the dawn of the universe.
Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory / Adam Makarenko. Image of Keck Observatory by Andrew Hara.

Source: W.M. Keck Observatory/News

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The Cosmic Wake of the Lighthouse Pulsar

Lighthouse Pulsar (PSR J1101-6101)

Credit: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./J. Dinsmore et al.; IXPE: NASA/MSFC/J. Dinsmore et al., Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA; Optical: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare

JPEG (650.6 kb) - Large JPEG (3.1 MB) - Tiff (9.4 MB) - More Images

Tour: NASA Discovers Crash of Extreme Stars in Unexpected Site (Video)

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Scientists using NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) directly measured the magnetic fields of PSR J1101−6101, a pulsar located within what is often referred to as the “Lighthouse” Nebula, for the first time.

A pulsar is a type of neutron star — the dense core leftover when a massive star collapses — with a strong magnetic field that spins incredibly fast. The pulsar at the center of the Lighthouse nebula is rotating at 16 times per second.

Astronomers studied two narrow offshoots extending from the Lighthouse pulsar to better understand how electrons at nearly the speed of light interact with the surrounding environment. When high-energy particles from the pulsar collide with the gas of interstellar space, they form a bow shock similar to the bow wave formed at the front of a speeding boat. Most particles become trapped behind this bow shock, forming the turbulent tail behind the pulsar. Previously, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory captured this tail that extends for over 37 light-years, the longest jet from an object seen in the Milky Way at the time.

This graphic contains data from different telescopes that shows the region around the Lighthouse pulsar and its wake. In this composite image, X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are purple, X-rays from NASA's IXPE are in blue, with radio emission captured by the Australia Compact Telescope Array in green. Optical light data from the 2MASS telescope shows the stars visible in this field of view.

A paper about the results recently published in the Astrophysical Journal. The IXPE mission, which continues to provide unprecedented data enabling groundbreaking discoveries about celestial objects across the universe, is a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. It is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems, Inc., headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Source: NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

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Visual Description:

This composite multiwavelength image captures the turbulent environment surrounding the Lighthouse pulsar, set against a vast, black background speckled with twinkling white and faint green stars. In the upper-left quadrant, a massive, cloud-like nebula glows in a textured, vibrant purple hue, anchored by a prominent four-pointed star shining brightly near its center. Moving toward the lower-right quadrant, the pulsar itself is located at the lower tip of a concentrated, brilliant whitish-blue elongated point of light. Extending outward from its core is a long, narrow, and slightly curved jet of purple and blue emission that streaks upward and to the right. This jet represents a massive 37-light-year tail of high-energy particles trailing behind the rapidly spinning star as it plow through interstellar space. This composite image contains X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in purple, additional X-ray from NASA's IXPE in blue, and radio data from CSIRO in green. The starfield is optical data from the 2MASS survey.

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Fast Facts for Lighthouse Pulsar (PSR J1101-6101)

Credit: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./J. Dinsmore et al.; IXPE: NASA/MSFC/J. Dinsmore et al., Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA; Optical: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare

Release Date: July 9, 2026
Scale: Image is about 22 arcmin (130 light-years) across.
Category: Neutron Stars/X-ray Binaries
Coordinates (J2000): RA 11h 01m 44.9s | Dec -61° 01´ 39.6"
Constellation: Carina
Observation Dates: 14 observations from Sept 2011 to Oct 2024
Observation Time: 126 hours 51 minutes (5 days 6 hours 51 minutes)
Obs. ID: 12420, 13787, 16007, 16517, 16518, 17421, 17422, 28352, 28519, 28520, 30570-30573
Instrument: ACIS
References: Dinsmore, J. et al., 2026, accepted. DOI:10.48550/arXiv.2604.22914
Color Code: X-ray: Chandra: magenta; IXPE: blue; Radio: green; Optical: red, green, blue
Distance Estimate: About 21,000 light-years from Earth

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ALMA Discovers Chemically Rich Stellar Cradles Inside a Supernova Remnant

Artist’s impression of hot cores —warm cradles of molecular gas surrounding a newborn star—discovered within a supernova remnant. Blue represents high-energy particles and photons produced by the supernova explosion, while brown indicates the surrounding interstellar medium. Credit: Takashi Shimonishi (Niigata University), based on observation results, with illustration support from generative A

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Highlights

• ALMA has detected hot molecular cores inside a supernova remnant for the first time.


• The discovery was made in RX J1713.7−3946, the remnant of a massive star that exploded about 1,600 years ago.


• The two hot cores are warm, dense cocoons of molecular gas surrounding new born stars.


• Both hot cores contain a wide variety of organic molecules.


• The chemical composition of one core is remarkably similar to that of hot cores in ordinary star-forming regions.


• The result suggests that newborn stars can remain protected within their natal cocoons, preserving molecular complexity even in the face of intense supernova feedback.

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The first detection of hot molecular cores in a supernova remnant suggests that newborn stars can preserve complex organic molecules even in the harsh aftermath of a stellar explosion

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have discovered warm, dense stellar cocoons rich in organic molecules inside a supernova remnant. The finding marks the first detection of hot molecular cores in such an extreme environment and suggests that the chemical ingredients associated with star and planet formation can survive even in the aftermath of a nearby stellar explosion.

The research team, led by Takashi Shimonishi of Niigata University, used ALMA to observe RX J1713.7−3946, the remnant of a massive star that exploded about 1,600 years ago. Supernovae are among the most energetic events in the universe. They forge heavy elements, accelerate cosmic rays, generate powerful shock waves, and can reshape nearby clouds of gas and dust. Yet their impact on the chemistry of the material from which new stars and planets form has remained uncertain.

Hot molecular cores are compact regions of warm, dense molecular gas surrounding newborn stars. They are important laboratories for astrochemistry because they contain molecules that can form on the surfaces of cold dust grains and later evaporate into gas when heated by a young star. Some of these molecules are complex organic molecules, considered important tracers of the chemical richness available during the formation of stars and planets.

ALMA’s sensitivity and high angular resolution allowed the team to identify two hot cores within the supernova remnant. Both objects show rich molecular emission, including a wide variety of organic molecules. A detailed analysis of one of the hot cores revealed that the relative abundances of its complex organic molecules are remarkably similar to those found in hot cores in ordinary star-forming regions that have not experienced nearby supernova explosions.

“These observations indicate that even in the harsh environment of a supernova remnant, newborn stars can remain well protected within their natal cocoons, preserving their rich molecular composition,” says Takashi Shimonishi, an astronomer at Niigata University, Japan, and the paper’s lead author. “The environments capable of harboring complex organic molecules—potential building blocks of prebiotic chemistry—may be more diverse than previously recognized,” Shimonishi adds.

The result suggests that the molecules in these hot cores have not been significantly destroyed, despite their location in a region affected by supernova feedback. The researchers propose several possible explanations. One is that the hot cores may have only recently begun to experience the effects of the supernova, leaving too little time for energetic particles to significantly alter their chemistry. Another possibility is that strong magnetic fields amplified by the supernova shock may help shield the dense molecular gas by suppressing the penetration of cosmic rays.

The discovery may also help astronomers investigate the early environment of our own Solar System. Analyses of primitive Solar System materials suggest that the Sun and planets may have formed in a region influenced by a nearby supernova explosion. The chemically rich hot cores found in RX J1713.7−3946 may therefore provide a valuable analogy for studying how supernova feedback affects the raw materials of future stars and planets.

Although the newly discovered hot cores have retained their molecular richness, it remains unclear whether this is a common outcome in regions affected by supernovae. Future observations with radio and infrared telescopes will help reveal the physical and chemical properties of stellar cradles and protoplanetary disks shaped by supernova feedback, and may provide new insights into whether the environment in which the Solar System formed was typical or exceptional.

Additional Information

This research was presented in “Survival of Molecular Complexity under Recent Supernova Feedback: Detection of Hot Cores in RX J1713.7−3946,” by Takashi Shimonishi, Hidetoshi Sano, Kenji Furuya, and Yoko Oya, published in The Astrophysical Journal. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ae6fba.

This article is based on a press release by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), an ALMA partner on behalf of East Asia.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).

ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

Source: ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array)/Press Releases

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Young Giant Gas Planet Beta Pic b Refuses to Reveal its Origin

Young Giant Gas Planet Beta Pic b Refuses to Reveal its Origin
© ESO/L. Calçada

The GRAVITY instrument of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory. © G. Rojas/ESO

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To the point

• Beta Pictoris b, atmosphere, origin: Researchers used the upgraded GRAVITY instrument (GRAVITY+) to study the atmosphere of Beta Pictoris b, a young giant gas planet, to understand its origin and atmospheric variability.


• Improved data, new findings: The updated GRAVITY data show a higher 12CO/13CO ratio than previous results, aligning with other studies and suggesting a lack of variance in the abundance ratio in the disc during planet formation.


• Atmospheric variability, rotation: There are tentative signs of atmospheric changes linked to Beta Pic b’s rotation period, possibly indicating clouds or chemical processes, but further observations are needed.


• Diagnostic tool doubts, isotope ratio limits: The consistent isotope ratios across many young gas giants and the interstellar medium challenge the use of carbon isotope ratios as reliable indicators of planet formation location.

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Results cast doubt on a seemingly reliable tool for inferring the origins of gas planets

The young and evolving planetary system of the 23-million-year-old star Beta Pictoris (short: Beta Pic) is regarded as an iconic circumstellar dust disc, which hosts at least three giant gas planets. Discovered already in 2008 by direct imaging, Beta Pic b is the most massive of those planets, measuring approximately 11 Jupiter masses. It orbits its host star on a wide trajectory, taking about 23 years for one revolution.

Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur (OCA), Nice, France and others observed Beta Pic b to investigate the planet’s origin and potential atmospheric variability with the recently upgraded GRAVITY+ instrument. It is mounted to the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at the Paranal Site in Chile. MPIA’s PhD student Antonia von Stauffenberg is the main author of the study published as a letter in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

“The GRAVITY+ interferometric instrument is highly stable [...], making it uniquely capable of high-fidelity characterization of directly imaged exoplanets”, says co-author and MPIA scientist Jonas Sauter. GRAVITY+ is an upgrade of the original GRAVITY instrument, equipped with improved adaptive optics. What can we learn about Beta Pic b’s atmosphere and origin?

The team applied a method proposed a few years ago to identify a planet’s birthplace inside its planet-forming disc. By measuring the relative abundance ratio between two different versions of carbon (C) locked inside carbon monoxide (CO) gas in Beta Pic b’s atmosphere, it should be possible to infer whether the planet formed outside or inside a region in the disc where carbon monoxide was present as ice. Considering the irradiation by the host star heating the disc from its centre, this would directly translate to the distance from the star at which the planet formed. The radius at which the temperature is low enough to turn gas into ice is commonly referred to as the snowline.

The technical term for the different forms of an element, such as carbon, is an isotope. Isotopes exhibit the same number of positively charged protons in the nucleus of an atom, but differ in the number of neutral neutrons, like in the two carbon isotopes 12C and 13C. As a consequence, they have slightly different masses but exhibit similar chemical properties. In space, carbon is often found in association with oxygen, forming 12CO and 13CO molecules.

Exciting tentative scenario

Interestingly, in an earlier attempt to assess the diagnostic ratio between 12CO and the somewhat heavier 13CO, MPIA scientist Matthieu Ravet utilised the original GRAVITY instrument before its upgrade, yielding a comparatively low ratio. The authors already suspected that GRAVITY may have been inadequate to properly resolve the key signals in this dataset and advised caution in interpreting the results. Still, following the rationale of the scenario mentioned above, this face value suggests that Beta Pic b might have grown in the outer disc beyond the snowline by accumulating CO ice rather than CO gas.

However, at a range of about 10 au (astronomical unit = the mean distance between the Sun and the Earth; 1 au = 149.6 million km) from the host star, Beta Pic b currently circles the disc clearly between the star and the snowline, where CO should have been present predominantly as a gas. Assuming the result was correct, this finding would indicate Beta Pic b may have migrated through the disc.

New and better outcomes with GRAVITY

Using GRAVITY+, von Stauffenberg and her collaborators now derived an updated and more precise 12CO/13CO abundance ratio in Beta Pic b’s atmosphere, which is significantly higher than the earlier value. While 12CO is clearly detected and its content is straightforward to determine, measuring 13CO requires a more sophisticated approach. Interestingly, the ratio is consistent with the value reported in the companion paper by González Picos et al. (2026), who employed a different instrument. This demonstrates the improved data quality GRAVITY+ delivers compared to its original design. The previous GRAVITY result was clearly affected by systematic uncertainties.

In addition, the astronomers also found subtle hints that the observed levels of flux coming from the planet vary over time. Despite its low significance, the dominating variations seem to be linked to the planet’s rotation period of approximately 8.7 hours. If true, this may hint at clouds or chemical processes in Beta Pic b’s atmosphere. However, more sensitive observations are required to confirm the result.

Antonia von Stauffenberg says: “The ability to accurately constrain both isotopologues and potential rotational variability using ground-based observations of a bona fide planet such as Beta Pictoris b demonstrates the exceptional data quality achieved with the updated GRAVITY+ instrument.”

Doubting the significance of abundance ratios

In the proposed scheme to recover a gas giant’s birthplace, the new, more precise 12CO/13CO abundance ratio clearly shifts Beta Pic b into the warmer, inner range of the natal planet-forming disc, consistent with the planet’s current location. In addition, the ratio broadly matches values commonly found in the Solar System and the interstellar medium (ISM), which pervades the space between the stars in the Milky Way. The overwhelming majority of about a dozen young giant gas planets probed for the CO ratio show similar values.

This consistency may actually be bad news, because the carbon isotope abundance ratio doesn’t seem to be that diagnostic after all, when used as a probe to identify a planet’s distance from its host star. The most likely explanation is that any potential variance during planet formation is too small to be caught by the proposed method. This means that the 12CO/13CO ratio currently fails to be sufficiently decisive to tell us anything specific about individual planet-forming environments.
 

"It is still difficult to utilise 13CO as a formation tracer of giant planets, due to the uncertainties that still persist in the models and measurements."  Antonia von Stauffenberg, MPIA

Therefore, it is very likely astronomers are missing some crucial physics that govern CO ice chemistry in planet-forming discs. Thus, the 12CO/13CO ratio may not tell us much about the differences between the milder gaseous environments and the cold, CO-ice-laden realm after all. For now, it seems the wide-orbit giant gas planets refuse to reveal their origins. New tools that can distinguish between planet formation scenarios are needed, and GRAVITY+ may play a vital role in finding and evaluating them.

Additional information

The results are based on data obtained as part of the GRAVTY+ Guarantee Time Programme (GTO) 114.27JS (PI: Laura Kreidberg). The GRAVITY+ consortium includes the following institutes: MPE, INSU/CNRS, University of Cologne, MPIA, CENTRA, University of Southampton, and the associated partners KU Leuven, University College Dublin, and Universidad Autónoma de México, in close collaboration with ESO and supported by the Max Planck Foundation.

MPIA astronomers involved in this study were Antonia von Stauffenberg, Jonas Sauter, Paul Mollière, Matthieu Ravet (also at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Nice, France [OCA] and Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France), David Trevascus, Wolfgang Brandner, Gaël Chauvin (also at OCA), Laura Kreidberg, and Elisabeth Matthews.

Other researchers were:

A. Berdeu (Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France), M. Bonnefoy (Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, France), G. Bourdarot (Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching bei München, Germany [MPE]), J.-B Le Bouquin (Université Grenoble Alpes: Saint-Martin-d’Hères, Auvergne-RhôneAlpes, France [UGA]), F. Eisenhauer (MPE), M. Houllé (UGA), F. Millour (OCA), J. Scigliuto (OCA), J. Wang (Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA), J. W. Xuan (Department of Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA [Caltech] and Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, USA), Y. Zhang (Caltech), and the GRAVITY+ Collaboration.

The Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an infrared interferometer that combines light collected by the four Very Large Telescope (VLT) 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UTs) or the four movable 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs). The VLTI is located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.

GRAVITY+ is an upgrade to the VLTI and its original GRAVITY instrument. It enables imaging of fainter and more distant astronomical objects than previously possible, while also improving high-contrast precision on bright objects. Its consortium consists of 15 research institutes from seven European countries, including MPIA and ESO.

Source: Max Planck Institute for Astronomy/Researche Reports

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Contacts:

Dr. Markus Nielbock
Press and outreach officer
Tel: +49 6221 528-134
Email: pr@mpia.de
MPIA press team
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany

Antonia von Stauffenberg
Email: a-stauffenberg@mpia.de
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg

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Original publication

A. von Stauffenberg et al.
13CO and potential variability in β Pictoris b with GRAVITY+
Astronomy & Astrophysics (2026)

Source | DOI

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Links

GRAVITY+ at ESO
GRAVITY+ at Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE)
GRAVITY at ESO
GRAVITY at Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE)

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Faintest planet ever imaged from Earth found after more than 10 years of hide-and-seek

PR Image eso2609a
VLT image of the Beta Pictoris d exoplanet

PR Image eso2609b
The Beta Pictoris d exoplanet observed over the years

PR Image eso2609c
Map of the sky around Beta Pictoris

PR Image eso2609d
Around Beta Pictoris

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Videos


PR Video eso2609a
New exoplanet had been hiding for more than 10 years | ESO News


PR Video eso2609b
Time-lapse of exoplanet Beta Pictoris d orbiting around its host star

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A team of astronomers have discovered a third planet orbiting the star Beta Pictoris. The new planet, Beta Pictoris d, is 100 times fainter than Beta Pictoris b — the first planet discovered in the same system — and is among the lightest exoplanets ever to be imaged from the ground. After spotting the planet using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), the team found it had been hiding in archive observations spanning more than a decade.

“This was a serendipitous discovery,” says Ben Sutlieff, co-lead of the study published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and astronomer at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. “We initially wanted to look more at a known planet in the system, Beta Pictoris b, to see how it changed over time,” he adds. However, when the team went to analyse their images of the system, they noticed something else, separated from Beta Pictoris b, that led them down an entirely new path.

“‘There’s something else there, did you see it?’” Markus Bonse, ESO astronomer in Germany and the other co-lead of the study, recalls saying when looking at the data. To confirm the nature of their detection, the team looked through the ESO archive, a catalogue of past observations made with ESO facilities. They found a new planet, Beta Pictoris d, in multiple images dating back as far as 11 years ago, including one where it was only just visible against the glare of its larger neighbour Beta Pictoris b. “Planet d, it seems, has been playing a game of hide-and-seek with us for over a decade and only now can we say ‘found you!’” says Jayne Birkby, co-author of the study and astronomer at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

The newly discovered planet, like the two others in the system, is a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn. However, Beta Pictoris d has a much wider orbit than the planets Beta Pictoris b and Beta Pictoris c. Moreover, while the first two planets are each around ten times the mass of Jupiter, the new planet is only 2.4 times more massive than Jupiter, making it one of the lightest ever imaged from the ground. The planet is also relatively cold and, hence, extremely faint relative to its host star.

Direct imaging, where the light from an object is captured as in a photograph, only works for planets bright enough to show up next to their much brighter host stars. Taking a direct image of a planet as faint as Beta Pictoris d, therefore, represents a significant achievement. “The new planet is 100 times fainter than Beta Pictoris b, the famous planet in the same system, making it the faintest exoplanet ever imaged directly from Earth,” explains Bonse [1].

This first clear detection of Beta Pictoris d, which is 63 light-years away from us, was made with the ERIS instrument on the VLT by Sutlieff, Bonse and their team. An independent team led by Aidan Gibbs at the University of California, US, also discovered the same planet using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a facility of the US, European and Canadian space agencies. Their results are also published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

To confirm a planet’s discovery from a detection, astronomers usually have to make follow-up observations. However, this system had been extensively studied, with several images stored in the ESO and JWST science archives. “To our joy, out it popped in previous SPHERE observations,” says Birkby, referring to another VLT instrument previously used to observe the Beta Pictoris system. The planet was also spotted in archival observations from NIRCam, a JWST instrument. Now that the team knew where to look for the potential new planet, “it turns out it was hiding in the data all along!” says Birkby. Co-author Valentin Christiaens, researcher at CEA Paris-Saclay, France, adds: “The detections in the archival SPHERE data are not only very exciting on their own, but also because they suggest a number of treasures are still hidden in the archives of VLT instruments!”

Beta Pictoris is now the second system, after HR 8799, where more than two planets have been directly imaged. “Systems with multiple directly imaged exoplanets are the ‘holy grails’ of discoveries, because they can teach us a lot about what different exoplanets are like in the same formation environment,” says Sutlieff [2]. Beta Pictoris d also clears up a mystery in its planetary system, as it has exactly the right mass and position to explain the particular shape of the surrounding debris disc, made of the leftovers of planet formation.

The discovery of Beta Pictoris d in this way encourages further direct imaging of planetary systems where faint planets may have been hiding in plain sight, including with ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). “Planets seem to have friends,” says Beth Biller, also a co-author of the paper and astronomer at the University of Edinburgh, “many of the famous directly imaged exoplanet systems seem to have multiple giant planets in the same system, and likely there are even more lower mass planets hiding in these systems that might be revealed with instruments on the ELT.”

Source: ESO/News

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Notes

[1] Beta Pictoris d is the faintest exoplanet ever imaged from Earth when corrected for the distance to the system — faintest in absolute magnitude (owing to its size and temperature only) not in apparent magnitude (where distance also contributes to faintness).

[2] Beta Pic is part of a group of stars all with the same age, and some of them have planets too. Beta Pic d seems to be almost a twin of one of these planets, 51 Eri b, meaning astronomers can use them both to anchor their models of how planets evolve and grow over time.

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More information

This research was presented in a paper to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae80a0).

This paper, co-led by B. J. Sutlieff and M. J. Bonse, involves over 90 authors from around the world, including Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Chile.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal, ESO will host and operate the south array of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chileanpartners and society.

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Contacts:

Ben Sutlieff
Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Email: ben.sutlieff@roe.ac.uk

Markus Bonse
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Garching bei München, Germany
Email: Markus.Bonse@eso.org

Jayne Birkby
Department of Physics, University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom
Email: jayne.birkby@physics.ox.ac.uk

Valentin Christiaens
CEA Paris-Saclay, Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Cité, CEA, CNRS
Paris, France
Tel: +33169083661
Email: valentin.christiaens@cea.fr

Beth Biller
Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)131 668 8349
Email: bbiller@ed.ac.uk

Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Media Manager
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6670
Cell: +49 151 241 664 00
Email: press@eso.org

Press and Public Relations
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Tel: +44(0)7979 446 209
Email: press.office@ed.ac.uk

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