Webb telescope zooms in on planet beyond our solar system

The team observed carbon dioxide on a hot gas giant called Wasp-39b, about 700 light years away

The telescope, designed and built at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, is the most powerful ever made. Photograph: Laura Betz/AP

The world’s most powerful telescope has made its first observations of a planet beyond our solar system, heralding in a new era of astronomy in which distant worlds can be scanned for signs of life.

The observations, from Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope, give new insights into the formation of the planet, a hot gas giant called Wasp-39bthat is 700 light years away in the Virgo constellation. They also provide the first clearcut evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star.