The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has reached a new milestone by capturing a direct image of a distant, cold planet in a unique solar system, astronomers revealed recently.

The exoplanet, known as 14 Herculis c or 14 Her c, orbits a star similar to the Sun about 60 light-years away in the Hercules constellation. In the latest JWST image, it appears as a faint, fuzzy orange dot, with its color resulting from heat emitted by its atmosphere translated into visible colors.

Scientists estimate that 14 Her c formed approximately 4 billion years ago and has an extremely cold atmospheric temperature of just 26 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 3 degrees Celsius).

14 Her c orbits its star at a distance of around 1.4 billion miles (2.2 billion kilometers), which is about 15 times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun. Placed in our solar system, it would be situated between Saturn and Uranus.

Unlike the orderly orbits of planets in our solar system, the 14 Herculis system is significantly misaligned. The two known planets, including 14 Her c, have orbits at angles of about 40 degrees to each other, forming an 'X'-like crossing pattern around their star.

This unusual arrangement may have been caused by the ejection of a third massive planet from the system early on, leading to a gravitational tug of war between the remaining two planets, according to researchers.

The instability in the system turned out to be beneficial for the scientific team. Out of nearly 6,000 known exoplanets, only a small fraction have been directly imaged.

Most directly imaged exoplanets are young, hot gas giants that emit enough infrared light to be distinguishable from the intense glare of their host stars. In contrast, colder and older planets like 14 Her c are usually too dim to detect.

However, the tilted orbit of the planet proved to be advantageous for direct imaging. Using JWST's coronagraph, the researchers successfully isolated the planet's faint infrared glow.

By adding 14 Her c to the catalog, astronomers have expanded the range of exoplanets available for study. By examining planets with varying masses, temperatures, and orbital characteristics, scientists aim to deepen their understanding of how planetary systems, including our own, develop and change over time.

'We want to understand how these planets change, because we want to understand how we got here,' said Balmer.