India, July 9 -- Opening thoughts. Calling all astrophiles. For the first time, NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has identified a planet orbiting a distant star using a new method called microlensing that identifies potential planets as their gravity warps space-time. Unlike what NASA calls "star-hugging transiting planets" that TESS regularly reports back, this newfound world is being called a super-Jupiter, named Gaia23bra b. And it is orbiting far from its host star.

The super-Jupiter is 1.6 times Jupiter's mass and a similar orbital distance, and it is said that discovery would be extremely unlikely for such a planet via the primary detection method TESS was designed for. Interestingly, Gaia23bra b was firs...