The new planet was found in a "stellar nursery" and formed approximately several million years ago — around the same time that the main Hawaiian islands emerged from the ocean.

Named 2M0437b, researchers first spotted the planet orbiting a remote, infant star in 2018.

The Keck Observatory on Maunakea was used to track the star that 2M0437b orbits to confirm that it was actually a planet of that star and not an object that was farther away.

2M0437b and its parent star reside in the Taurus Cloud, a well-known "nursery" for planets, but since the planet has a much wider orbit than many others in its solar system — it's almost 100 times farther away from its sun than Earth is from its sun — it was harder to observe without new adaptive optic technology