For years, astronomers have sought a way to directly observe the atmospheres of exoplanets, worlds orbiting distant stars. Unlike indirect detection methods, such as transit observations or radial velocity measurements,

It's rare for any observatory to directly image a planet beyond our solar system, called an exoplanet, but the powerful James Webb Space Telescope has captured four of them in the stellar system HR 8799.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has achieved a groundbreaking feat by directly observing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmospheres of exoplanets for the very first time. Announced by NASA on March 17,