Astronomers found strong evidence that a gassy Jupiter-size world is orbiting one of three stars in the stellar system closest to our own.

It would orbit within Alpha Centauri A’s habitable zone, the starlight-bathed region where liquid water can persist on a planet’s surface. Announced on August 7 and described in two preprint papers that have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters,

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The closest exoplanets to the Solar System are around the red dwarf Proxima Centauri. This little star is orbiting two bigger Sun-like stars, which are known as Alpha Centauri A and B. For over a decade,

It's not easy to uncover exoplanets, largely lightless objects that either lurk in the dark void of space or are blown out by the light of a nearby star. But astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope believe they've found a new one — and it's just four light years away.

The discovery was made using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which detected a likely gas giant around Alpha Centauri A- one of three stars in the Alpha Centauri system, just over four light-years from Earth.