What are the important details of NASA's James Webspace?

Astronomers have observed a seven-planet system called TRAPPIST-1 orbiting a Sun-like star. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope spotted the system 39 light-years from Earth and obtained important details about it. The most important of these details is that these planets are in the habitable zone of their host star. The habitable zone is the area where water can exist in liquid form. This is a property that is necessary for the development of life on the planet.

Scientists hope that this system will also detect other traces of carbon dioxide or methane in the future. According to experts, these seven planets are as far from their central star as the distance between the Sun and the first planet of the solar system, Mercury.

Astronomers have spotted a pair of exoplanets about 100 light-years from Earth and say the never-before-seen planet is a strong candidate to support life.

"The outermost planet is at the inner edge of what's called the habitable zone, a bit like Earth," said Emory Triaud, who studies planets at the University of Birmingham in the UK and is part of the team that made it. Discovery, says New Scientist's, Alex Wilkins.

A planet in a star's habitable zone has the necessary conditions for liquid water to exist on its surface. Triode told New Scientist that of all the habitable-zone planets discovered so far, it is, according to his calculations, the second-best candidate to host life.

The team details their findings in a paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The hopeful planet is about 40 percent larger than Earth and orbits its star roughly once every 8.5 days, according to a news release. Based on its size, "we expect the planet to be rocky," Laetitia Delries, co-author of the paper and an astronomer at the University of Liege in Belgium, tells Inverse Keona Smith. "We have yet to find exoplanets smaller than 1.4 Earth radii that are not rocky."

Delriz tells Inverse that the planet is also likely locked to its star, meaning it's always day on one side and night on the other. It's only 3.7 million miles from its sun, while Earth orbits 93 million miles away, writes NPR's, Dustin Jones.

Francisco J. Puzellos, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain and co-author of the paper, said in a press release that despite the star's close orbit, the exoplanet could still have conditions suitable for life. Hurrah. That's because the planet's sun is only half the temperature of ours and about 6.5 times smaller.

Still, some features may work against the planet's potential habitability: it's larger than Earth and can receive high levels of radiation from orbiting close to its star, both of which host points, Beth Buller, an astrophysicist. The University of Edinburgh in the UK, which was not involved in the research, says New Scientist.

To discover the exoplanet, scientists used telescopes from a project called SPECULOOS - or the Search for Habitable Planets Obscuring Ultra-Cool Stars. They first observed this distant solar system and confirmed the existence of another planet, first spotted by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey, or TESS. This planet was too close to its star to support life, but as the search continued, they discovered another, more promising planet, Alta reports.

TESS identifies planets by measuring the light levels of stars. When a planet passes between a star and a satellite, TESS can detect a dimming of starlight, NPR writes. Ground-based reflecting telescopes, which are more sensitive to infrared light, follow to confirm the finding. According to Space.com's Robert Lee, this second look is necessary because cool stars like those orbiting the newly discovered planet emit mostly infrared light.

Next, scientists hope to use the James Webb Space Telescope to find out what makes up the planet's atmosphere - if any. Using this site, scientists can learn more about an exoplanet's potential to host life, in reverse.