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 James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first direct images of carbon dioxide in a planet outside the solar system in HR 8799, a multiplanet system 130 light-years away that has long been a key target for planet formation studies.

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.