The telescope, which can see farther into the universe than anything before it, has turbocharged the search for planets beyond the Solar System since coming online in 2022.

Until now, however, its deep gaze has mostly been used to probe already known exoplanets -- to find out key information such as the atmospheric composition -- rather than tracking down new worlds.

The discovery of exoplanet TWA 7b, revealed in a study in the journal Nature, "represents a first for the telescope", France's CNRS research centre said in a statement.

The large majority of the nearly 6,000 exoplanets found so far have been identified from the light they blot out when they pass in front of their star, rather than from direct images of the planet.

Webb "has spent an enormous amount of time observing planets that have never been directly imaged," lead study author Anne-Marie Lagrange of the Paris Observatory told AFP.

'Blinded by the light' 

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