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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Links

• Research paper
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• Find out more about ESO's Extremely Large Telescope on our dedicated website and press kit
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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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Light-bending by extreme gravity

An artist's impression of an accretion disk of material swirling into a black hole, with a hot corona illustrated by a purple haze. The apparent warping of the disk is due to the extreme gravity of the black hole bending the light paths around it. Image credit: NASA/Caltech-IPAC/Robert Hurt - Download Image

During the past week, NuSTAR performed a 5-day long observation of the nearby active galaxy MCG-06-30-15 in coordination with JAXA/NASA/ESA’s XRISM observatory and NASA’s IXPE observatory. For nearly three decades, this source has been a premier X-ray target for studying the extreme environment around a supermassive black hole. One long-standing puzzle is the dramatic variability of direct X-ray emission from the hot corona—the compact cloud of energetic particles near the central engine—while reflected X-rays off the accretion disk vary much less. One possible explanation is relativistic light-bending by the supermassive black hole: changes in the geometry of the corona, particularly its height above the black hole, will strongly affect X-ray photon paths. MCG-06-30-15 naturally cycles through bright and faint states on timescales of only a few hours, so a 5-day observation should track this evolution in real time. NuSTAR’s unique sensitivity to high-energy X-rays allows it to track both the primary coronal emission and reflected X-rays across flux states, while XRISM's unprecedented spectral resolution simultaneously measures changes in iron emission line from the accretion disk. Together, these observations will provide one of the most direct tests yet of whether relativistic light bending drives the observed X-ray variability, while revealing how the geometry of the corona evolves as the source changes brightness. Simultaneous X-ray polarization measurements from NASA’s IXPE observatory will also provide an independent probe of the coronal geometry, offering a powerful complementary test of this picture.

Author: Indrani Pal (Postdoctoral Fellow, Clemson University)

Source: NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR)/Weekly Highlights

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Astronomers Detect Magnetic Fingerprint of a Cosmic Explosion for the First Time

This illustration depicts Faraday rotation in the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst. A powerful jet (upper left) sends polarized radio waves outward through the thin wall of a surrounding bubble of magnetized gas called an HII region. As the light passes through this material, its polarization angle is twisted by the magnetic field. Because the effect is stronger at longer wavelengths, the red and blue waves, which represent different radio wavelengths, exit the bubble oscillating in different directions. By measuring this difference, astronomers were able to map the magnetic environment surrounding GRB 260310A for the first time. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/M.Weiss. Hi-Res File

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NSF VLA radio telescope reveals polarized light and a powerful magnetic environment in a gamma-ray burst afterglow

Astronomers have made a series of landmark observations of one of the Universe’s most violent events. Using the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array (NSF VLA) radio telescope, which is operated by the U. S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO), the team detected polarized light from a gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow for the first time at radio wavelengths. It also marks the first time scientists have detected Faraday rotation in a GRB, a phenomenon in which magnetic fields cause the polarization of light to twist as it travels through space, revealing how the magnetic environment of these explosions interacts with the light they produce. The findings, led by researchers at the University of Arizona and the University of Utah, offer a new window into the extreme physics driving these titanic explosions.

What Are Gamma-Ray Bursts?

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the Universe, releasing in a matter of seconds as much energy as the Sun will emit over its entire lifetime. They are thought to launch narrow jets of particles accelerating to nearly the speed of light, and those jets produce a radio “afterglow” that can linger for months. Despite decades of study, the magnetic fields that are believed to accompany these jets and their local environments have remained stubbornly difficult to measure, until now.

GRB 260310A Reveals Polarized Radio Waves

The burst in question, designated GRB 260310A, was relatively nearby Earth, in cosmic standards, making its radio afterglow one of the brightest seen in decades. That brightness gave astronomers an extraordinary opportunity. By pointing the NSF VLA at the fading explosion, the team found that the radio waves were polarized, meaning the light waves were oscillating in a preferred direction, much like sunlight reflecting off the surface of water, which polarized sunglasses are designed to filter out.

Faraday Rotation in a Gamma-ray Burst

This alone would have been an exciting first for the NSF VLA. But the team made an even more extraordinary discovery: the polarization signal changed across different wavelengths, a phenomenon known as Faraday rotation. Never before detected in a gamma-ray burst, this effect acts like a magnetic fingerprint, encoding information about the strength and structure of the fields the light passed through. Just as a prism bends different colors of visible light by different amounts, a magnetized plasma can rotate the polarization angle of radio waves. The faster that rotation changed with wavelength, the stronger the magnetic field the light passed through.

“GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the Universe, and magnetic fields are thought to play a central role in powering them, but probing those fields has been extraordinarily difficult,” said Tanmoy Laskar, assistant professor at the University of Utah. “By detecting polarized radio emission, we can now directly measure the magnetic environment of one of the Universe’s most violent events. Our new GRB observations allow us to use the Universe as our laboratory to test our understanding of how physics operates in such extreme conditions.”

The NSF VLA data revealed a magnetic field along the light’s path that was thousands of times stronger than what could be explained by our own galaxy or the space between galaxies. Instead, it points to an exceptionally dense, magnetized cloud of gas surrounding the star that exploded to produce GRB 260310A.

Clues for GRB Origins

That cloud is what astronomers call an HII region, a bubble of ionized hydrogen gas shaped by powerful ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from a massive young star. The fact that GRB 260310A appears to have exploded inside such a region is consistent with GRBs arising from the deaths of the most massive stars, and may help scientists understand precisely what kinds of stars and environments are capable of producing these extreme events.

“Previous searches for polarization in GRBs used facilities like the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope that measure shorter wavelengths and had to happen early, before the afterglow light faded,” said Collin Christy, a graduate student at the University of Arizona and lead author of the study. “Now, with the NSF VLA, we’ve pushed into the centimeter bands and made the first ever measurement of Faraday rotation in a GRB. Each new observation reveals another layer of the magnetic story these explosions are telling us.”

Why it Matters “Future monitoring of GRB afterglows with the NSF VLA and other radio telescopes will allow scientists to watch magnetic field structures evolve in real time,” said Assistant Professor Dr. Kate Denham Alexander, Christy’s PhD advisor. “This is a capability that could transform our understanding of how relativistic jets form, how they are powered, and how magnetic energy is released in the most extreme environments the Universe has to offer.”

Source: National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)/News

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About NRAO

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the U.S. National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

About ALMA

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.

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VLA Sky Survey Sets New Standard for High-Resolution, Wide-Area Radio Astronomy

Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO
Hi-Res File

VLASS2.1.se.T28t01.J001924+723000 (0:13:00.8, 72:31:18.7 - Planetary Nebula/Tycho Brahe SN Remnant) (Left) & VLASS2.1.se.T27t08.J122846+673000 (12:33:14.1, 67:07:43.8 - Radio Galaxy) (Right). Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/VLASS - Hi-Res File

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The U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) has completed observations for the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS), the most detailed radio survey of the sky ever conducted, providing an unprecedented view of the dynamic radio universe.

Scope and Scale of VLASS

Conducted with the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array (NSF VLA), VLASS spans nearly a decade of observations, from September 2017 through February 2026, and represents one of the most ambitious radio surveys ever undertaken. Covering approximately 34,000 square degrees, essentially the entire sky visible to the VLA down to -40 degrees declination, the survey delivers a powerful new resource for astronomers worldwide. The survey produced approximately 0.5 petabytes of raw data, and the total volume of processed data products is expected to reach about 2 petabytes, making it the largest survey the VLA has undertaken in terms of data volume.

“With VLASS, we now have a radio map of the sky that matches the resolution of modern optical and infrared surveys,” said Amy Kimball, VLASS Head of Operations. “This opens the door to truly multiwavelength discoveries at a level of detail that was not previously possible.”

VLASS achieves an angular resolution of about 2.5 arcseconds, making it the highest-resolution full-sky radio survey to date. Observations were carried out across the 2–4 GHz frequency range, enabling astronomers to measure in-band spectral indices, which are key to understanding the physical processes powering radio emission from cosmic sources.

Observing Strategy and Coverage

Over the course of roughly 6,500 observing hours, the NSF VLA repeatedly scanned the sky using an innovative “on-the-fly mosaicking” technique. In this mode, antennas continuously sweep across the sky in a raster pattern while collecting data, maximizing efficiency and uniform coverage. The survey observed the sky three and a half times in total, with half the sky imaged four times and the other half three times, enabling both deep imaging and the detection of variable and transient sources.

VLASS was conducted in full polarization, allowing astronomers to probe cosmic magnetic fields through measurements such as Faraday rotation. These data provide new insights into the structure and evolution of magnetism across the universe. The survey is a cornerstone of NSF NRAO’s Science Ready Data Products initiative, which provides fully calibrated data and high-quality images directly to the scientific community and the public. By lowering technical barriers, VLASS makes cutting-edge radio astronomy accessible to both experts and non-specialists.

VLASS is designed to address four major science themes:
– Hidden Explosions and Transient Events, including supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and other short-lived phenomena.
– Faraday Tomography of the Magnetic Sky, using polarization data to map magnetic fields across cosmic environments.
– Imaging Galaxies through Time and Space, tracing the evolution of galaxies and active galactic nuclei.
– The New Milky Way, revealing previously unseen structures and sources within our own galaxy.

These themes are described in detail in the survey’s foundational paper (Lacy et al. 2020, PASP, 132, 035001), which outlines the scientific goals and design of VLASS.

A Legacy Dataset for the Future

By combining high resolution, wide sky coverage, spectral information, and time-domain sensitivity, VLASS establishes a new benchmark for radio surveys and provides a legacy dataset that will support discovery for years to come. Processing and imaging of the full dataset will continue over the next several years as these science-ready products are completed and released.

“VLASS is not just a survey, it is a long-term investment in the future of astrophysics,” said Mark Lacy, VLASS Project Director. “Its combination of depth, coverage, and accessibility ensures that it will remain a foundational resource for the community.”

Additional information and access to VLASS data products are available through NRAO here.

Source: National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)/News

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About NRAO

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a major facility of the U.S. National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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NASA’s Roman Telescope Will Spot Distant Black Holes That Shred Stars

This artist’s concept portrays a Sun-like star being shredded by a supermassive black hole — a phenomenon known as a tidal disruption event. During these events, the region around a black hole can brighten and become visible across great distances. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be able to spot and study tidal disruption events that occurred early in the universe’s history. By characterizing an earlier population of supermassive black holes, astronomers can learn about their origins. Credit: NASA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

This visualization shows the average number of tidal disruption events NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is predicted to detect in a year, based on simulations. Roman is expected to record about 100 such events in a year. Video: NASA, STScI. Visualization: Christian Nieves (STScI). Sound: Christian Nieves (STScI). Designer: Dani Player (STScI). Animation: Greg Bacon (STScI). Link Video 

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Black holes are best studied by looking for the light emitted from their accretion disk — the matter that swirls around them before being consumed. Lighter supermassive black holes are challenging to observe because they tend to be less luminous due to less accretion. But occasionally, they shred and consume an entire star, brightening to outshine their entire host galaxy — known as a tidal disruption event (TDE). By characterizing that population of early supermassive black holes and how they evolve and grow for billions of years, Roman will provide clues to the ultimate origin of these behemoths.

“The Roman Space Telescope is going to be transformative for transient science,” said lead author Mitchell Karmen of the Johns Hopkins University, a graduate student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. “Thanks to Roman’s high sensitivity, we can find multiple tidal disruption events out to greater distances and earlier cosmic times than ever before.”

A paper about this research published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal.

Shredding Stars

Roman’s High-Latitude Time-Doman Survey, one of three core community surveys, is particularly well suited to find and study TDEs in the early universe. This survey will cover about 18 square degrees on the sky, an area equivalent to 90 full moons, at a regular cadence. By revisiting the same regions repeatedly, astronomers can find large numbers of transient events like TDEs.

Tidal disruption events are phenomena unique to lighter supermassive black holes. Heftier black holes weighing more than 1 billion Suns will swallow incoming stars whole. But lighter black holes of about 100,000 to 100 million Suns can shred a star before consuming it, creating a beacon that brightens over a couple of weeks before gradually fading away.

The rate of TDEs fluctuates over cosmic time. Previous work predicted that the rate of TDEs would decrease with increasing distance because most young black holes were too light to generate a TDE. However, this new research takes into account numerous factors that evolve over time, like the frequency of galaxy (and hence black hole) mergers as well as the number of stars within the core of each galaxy and how closely packed they are.

Karmen and his colleagues modeled these and other effects to predict how many tidal disruption events Roman could observe, as well as other observatories like the ground-based National Science Foundation-Department of Energy Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The team forecasts that astronomers will see the rate of TDEs increase as Roman probes greater distances and earlier times until “cosmic noon,” about 11 to 12 billion years ago when star formation peaked throughout the universe, before decreasing again.

Complementary Observations

Roman will observe near-infrared wavelengths of light. Light from distant TDEs becomes stretched to longer wavelengths by the expansion of the universe, a phenomenon known as cosmological redshift. As a result, Roman is inherently optimized to detect TDEs whose light traveled anywhere from 8 billion to 11 billion years to reach us.

The Rubin Observatory also will scan large swaths of the sky and pick up many new TDEs. However, it will observe visible light, which limits it to closer TDEs than Roman.

The research by Karmen’s team finds that Rubin will detect thousands to tens of thousands of TDEs per year. While Roman is expected to find up to 100 TDEs per year, those black holes will be much more distant, within the realm of cosmic history that is most important for distinguishing among black hole origin scenarios.

“Just by counting the number of TDEs as a function of redshift, you can put meaningful constraints on the population of million-solar-mass black holes,” said co-author Suvi Gezari, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland. “Roman will be transformative in that it can probe tidal disruption events out to greater distances, so you can look at how the rate of TDEs evolves over time.”

Origins of supermassive black holes

Astronomers have observed truly gargantuan black holes very early in the history of the universe — so early that theories struggle to explain how they could have become so large, so quickly. They must have started smaller and grown over time, but how much smaller?

One theory, known as “light seeds,” begins with black holes that are created from the deaths of massive stars. Such black holes might weigh up to a few hundred times our Sun. These black holes then would merge over time, as well as consume surrounding gas at an astonishing rate. In this scenario, every young galaxy would be expected to have a massive black hole at its center.

A second theory, known as “heavy seeds,” suggests that a black hole could be born with a much higher mass, up to a million times our Sun, through a process such as the direct collapse of a gas cloud. This process should be less common, though, which would result in supermassive black holes being much rarer in early galaxies.

“Tidal disruption events help us probe the population of light supermassive black holes, which can help us discriminate between these models,” Karmen said.

Ultimately, Roman’s tally of tidal disruption events will help researchers trace global effects that impact the black hole population over time.

Once Roman and Rubin begin regular science operations, the team looks forward to comparing their forecasts to the actual detections those observatories make.

“Just like Webb has transformed our understanding of distant, high-redshift galaxies, Roman is poised to transform our understanding of high-redshift transients,” Gezari said.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.

Source: NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope/Mission

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By Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940

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