Nicholas Wogan

In 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope turned its gaze toward a distant star in the constellation Virgo. Orbiting it is HAT-P-26 b, a warm Neptune, a world with a mass of 18.6 Earths and a radius of 6.33 Earths. The planet transited across the star's disk, and at that moment its atmosphere became briefly visible.

A kindergarten where some kids are busy making sandcastles while others are already assembling building blocks. That's roughly what the V1298 Tau system looks like: it's only 20 million years old — by cosmic standards, it just left the nursery. Several planets orbit it, and two of them, b and e, turned out to be surprisingly different.