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 gas giants outside our solar system are not capable of hosting extraterrestrial life, but do offer clues in a lingering mystery about how distant planets form, researchers said.

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope has captured direct images of carbon dioxide in a planet beyond our solar system for the first time. The images feature HR 8799, a multiplanet system 130 light-years from Earth.