On a quiet night last year, University of Cincinnati astrophysics graduate student Paul Smith was looking over data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). After being allotted observation time with Webb, he and his colleagues watched TOI-2031A (a star 901 light-years from Earth) and waited for signs of a planetary transit. According to their calculations, this star would experience a dip in brightness caused by an orbiting planet passing in front of it, relative to the JWST's line of sight. The gas giant, designated TOI-2031A b, had been identified previously by the *Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite* (TESS) and is the only exoplanet detected around its sun so far. The planet is about 1.267 times the size of Jupiter, 80% as massive, and orbits its star at a distance of just 0.066 AU, less than 7% the distance between Earth and the Sun. This makes TOI-2031 A b a "Hot Jupiter," a subset of gas giants that orbit very close to their suns, which are surprisingly common in the exoplanet census.…