NASA Exoplanet Discovery: Astronomers Find Hidden Third Planet in Beta Pictoris System

It has taken over ten years, but astronomers have finally won a prolonged game of cosmic hide-and-seek with a planet hiding around the star Beta Pictoris. The exoplanet, named Beta Pictoris d, is located 63 light-years away and has two planetary siblings that were discovered earlier.

The newly found world is 100 times fainter than its sibling Beta Pictoris b, the first planet discovered in the system, making Beta Pictoris d the faintest exoplanet ever seen from Earth.

Faintest Exoplanet Ever Directly Imaged

Like its previously discovered sibling, Beta Pictoris d is a gas giant. However, unlike Beta Pictoris b and Beta Pictoris c, it sits much further from its parent star and is far cooler than its siblings.

The newly discovered world is also smaller than its siblings. While Beta Pictoris b and Beta Pictoris c each have around 10 times the mass of Jupiter, Beta Pictoris d has only around 2.4 times Jupiter's mass, making it one of the lightest exoplanets ever directly imaged by a ground-based telescope.

"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!'" team member Jayne Birkby, an astronomer at the University of Oxford in the UK, said in a statement. Why Are ISRO Scientists Resigning? Department of Space Tightens Exit Rules Amid Staff Exodus.

Discovery Solves Long-Standing Debris Disk Puzzle

The discovery of Beta Pictoris d helps clear up a puzzle regarding a disk of dust and debris in this planetary system, theorized to be leftovers of planet formation. The newly found world has exactly the right mass and location needed to explain both the odd shape of this debris disk and its position. NASA's Webb Telescope Discovers Hidden Giant Planet in Beta Pictoris System; Know Its Name.

An 11-Year Game Of Hide-And-Seek

The team behind the discovery wasn't initially looking for a third planet around Beta Pictoris. They were instead studying the system's first known planet.

"This was a serendipitous discovery," team co-leader Ben Sutlieff, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh, said. "We initially wanted to look more at a known planet in the system, Beta Pictoris b, to see how it changed over time."

That was until they spotted telltale signs of another planet around the same star. Digging back into 11 years of archival data, the team found the third planet lurking in various images.

Of the over 6,000 worlds in NASA's exoplanet catalog, less than 100 have been discovered using direct imaging, since such detections require picking out a planet's thermal glow from the glare of its parent star. Catching a direct image of a world as faint as Beta Pictoris d marks a major step forward for the technique.

"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," team co-leader and European Southern Observatory researcher Markus Bonse said.

Second System Ever With Multiple Directly Imaged Planets

The discovery makes the Beta Pictoris system only the second in which more than two worlds have been directly imaged. The first was HR 8799, located around 133 light-years away.

"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," Sutlieff said.

The find is expected to encourage further direct-imaging searches of planetary systems that may harbor other faint, hidden planets, an effort that could be picked up by the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in Chile's Atacama Desert.

"Planets seem to have friends," team member Beth Biller, of the University of Edinburgh, said. "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."

The team's research was published Wednesday, July 15, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 17, 2026 07:52 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).