The James Webb telescope aimed at a giant planet 330 light-years from Earth and measured, for the first time, a surprisingly mild temperature, more similar to ours than to the furnace of other planets of the type.

Written by Bruno Teles

Published on 22/05/2026 at 14:31

Updated on 22/05/2026 at 14:32

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Calm down, it’s not a second Earth. It’s a giant gas planet, the size of Saturn, and the so-called mild temperature still exceeds 70 degrees. But it’s the first time that the atmosphere of a temperate giant planet has been read, and what appeared inside was methane gas.

The planet is called TOI-199b, it is more than 330 light-years from Earth and is a gas giant the size of Saturn. The discovery was published in a study on May 20, 2026, in the scientific journal The Astronomical Journal.

According to Pennsylvania State University, Penn State, which led the research along with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, the James Webb telescope read the atmosphere of the exoplanet and found it full of methane, with traces of ammonia and carbon dioxide. The information was released on May 21, 2026.

Why “temperature similar to Earth’s” doesn’t mean a new home

The James Webb telescope studied TOI-199b, a planet the size of Saturn with a mild temperature and methane atmosphere, 330 light-years from Earth. — Before dreaming of moving, it’s worth understanding what this planet is.

TOI-199b is a giant ball of gas, with no ground to stand on, similar to Saturn, which orbits its star every 105 days. The estimated temperature is around 79 degrees Celsius, hot by our standards, but surprisingly mild compared to what is usually seen in giant planets.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

What makes this planet so rare

The charm of the story is its rarity. Almost every giant planet that astronomers can study up close is one of those hot Jupiters, easy to observe because they are enormous and scorching. Cold giants, like ours, are distant and icy. A temperate giant, just right, is a rare collectible piece.

TOI-199b is one of the very few known temperate giant exoplanets, and the first to have its atmosphere studied in detail. For astronomy, it’s like opening a door that was closed: an entire class of worlds that no one had managed to peek inside until now.

How the James Webb read a planet 330 light-years away

It may seem like magic to read the air of a planet so far away, but the technique has a name and logic. It’s called transmission spectroscopy. When the planet passes in front of the star, some of its light passes through the planet’s atmosphere before reaching us. The James Webb telescope separates this light into its various colors, like a prism does with white light, and each gas leaves a sort of fingerprint there.

That’s how the team found methane. This gas is common in the icy giants of our solar system, but it was notably missing in the middle ground of temperate planets. Finding a methane atmosphere in this type of world fills a gap that bothered scientists. The reading also brought clues of other gases, and new observations should reveal how much of each exists in this methane atmosphere.

Why this matters, even for Earth

In the end, the discovery is less about the planet itself and more about what it teaches. Each exoplanet of this type helps refine models of how planets and atmospheres are born and change over time. And, incredibly, understanding the chemistry of a temperate giant 330 light-years away can even provide clues about Earth’s own atmosphere.

Here’s a fun fact: the first exoplanet in history was discovered in 1992 by a team that included a researcher from the same Penn State. Since then, thousands of worlds have been cataloged, but only now has a temperate giant finally had its air read. The James Webb telescope didn’t find a new address for humanity; it found a new window to understand what worlds out there, and ours too, are made of.

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The James Webb telescope aimed at a giant planet 330 light-years from Earth and measured, for the first time, a surprisingly mild temperature, more similar to ours than to the furnace of other planets of the type.

Calm down, it’s not a second Earth. It’s a giant gas planet, the size of Saturn, and the so-called mild temperature still exceeds 70 degrees. But it’s the first time that the atmosphere of a temperate giant planet has been read, and what appeared inside was methane gas.

Why “temperature similar to Earth’s” doesn’t mean a new home

What makes this planet so rare

How the James Webb read a planet 330 light-years away

Why this matters, even for Earth

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The James Webb telescope aimed at a giant planet 330 light-years from Earth and measured, for the first time, a surprisingly mild temperature, more similar to ours than to the furnace of other planets of the type.

Calm down, it’s not a second Earth. It’s a giant gas planet, the size of Saturn, and the so-called mild temperature still exceeds 70 degrees. But it’s the first time that the atmosphere of a temperate giant planet has been read, and what appeared inside was methane gas.

Why “temperature similar to Earth’s” doesn’t mean a new home

What makes this planet so rare

How the James Webb read a planet 330 light-years away

Why this matters, even for Earth

Dissatisfied with seeing people sleeping on the street, a man named Ryan Donais started building small mobile homes so that homeless people can escape the cold, each equipped with a bed, running water, electricity, and heating.

Workers were opening a modern road in Dover when they found, 6 meters below the asphalt, a 3,500-year-old boat made of stitched oak and plant fibers.

A giant brown band visible from space, approximately 8,850 kilometers long, connected Africa to America in the Atlantic Ocean, and satellites revealed that it is neither land nor pollution, but the largest accumulation of seaweed in the world, which broke records in 2025.

Consumers eat six times more chicken than in the 1960s, global meat supply quadruples in 60 years, and FAO report reveals the invisible cost on the plate: livestock could drive 80% of the increase in agricultural emissions over the next decade.

Using high-resolution satellite images, archaeologists rediscovered the Egyptian city of Imet, buried for centuries in the Nile Delta, revealing rare multi-story houses, granaries, and a sacred road linked to the cobra goddess Wadjet, from about 2,400 years ago.

Two 17-year-old Kenyans use coconut shells, corn cobs, and recycled materials to create an exhaust filter that reduces 93.3% of pollutant particles and wins an environmental award in Africa.

Man built a 5-acre lake to raise bass, but after 1,000 days the project turned into a wildlife sanctuary with eagles, deer, ducks, owls, and live cameras that transformed the farm into a biodiversity laboratory.

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