Radio signals coming directly from a planet outside our solar system have been detected for the first time.

Astronomers used the massive MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa to measure the short, repeating bursts of radio waves.

It is the first occasion in which they have been able to narrow down the signal to a single planet rather than the star system it is in.

However, the researchers say this isn’t an alien civilisation trying to send us a message.

Instead the signals indicate the presence of a strong magnetic field around the planet – which creates an aurora similar to the Northern and Southern Lights on Earth – but in this case more than a thousand times stronger.

The signal originated on Beta Pictoris b, a young gas giant 63.4 light years away, said the researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the US.

In their pre-print paper, they wrote: ‘Although auroral radio bursts are observed in solar system planets and in some ultracool dwarfs, no radio detection has previously been unambiguously localised to an extrasolar planet rather than its host star.’

On four separate occasions in 2025 and 2026, scientists focused their radio telescopes on Beta Pictoris. Previous studies have found that this star is home to four orbiting exoplanets, named Beta Pictoris a, Beta Pictoris b, Beta Pictoris c and Beta Pictoris d.

Although scientists have detected powerful radio bursts from a solar system outside our own, it has previously been immensely difficult to filter out any planetary signals from the noise of a nearby star.

However, the particular type of star and radio signal the astronomers found made this fine separation possible for the first time.

The radio signal was highly circularly polarised, which is a classic signature of a signal emitted by a planet's aurora.

Beta Pictoris is also an 'early–type star', meaning it is larger, hotter, and structured differently from stars such as our sun.

However, these types of stars are incapable of producing the kinds of radio signals the researchers were seeing.

The authors wrote: 'No physical mechanism known to cause radio emission in early–type stars can explain the observed emission.'

That means the radio signal must be coming from one of the orbiting exoplanets, rather than the star itself.

Using bright galaxy cores called quasars as reference points, the scientists finally found that the signal was being emitted by Beta Pictoris b, the second planet out from the star.

Previous studies have shown that Beta Pictoris b is a young gas giant around 10 times the mass of Jupiter.

What makes this discovery so exciting is that it opens up a new avenue for understanding the make-up of exoplanets.

Beta Pictoris b's aurora is produced by an effect called Electron Cyclotron Maser Instability, which is the same process that creates the stunning auroras on planets like Jupiter and Mars.

Since scientists have a good understanding of how this effect works, they can use the radio signals it produces to make predictions about the planet itself.

Using their new measurements, the researchers were able to show that Beta Pictoris b has an incredibly strong magnetic field, thousands of times more powerful than Earth's.

These signals are further boosted by the planet's rapid rotation, with the researchers estimating that days on Beta Pictoris b only last eight to nine hours.

While it might be disappointing that these signals don't come from an alien race, insights like these could be key to finding life beyond our solar system one day.

A planet's magnetic field insulates the surface from harmful radiation that would destroy early life and helps hold the atmosphere together against the ravages of solar wind.

If astronomers can isolate aurora signals from exoplanets, they can also figure out which planets are most likely to have conditions favourable for life.

The researchers already have plans to use their new techniques on seven other exoplanets located in five solar systems.

These planets could soon be analysed in the same way as Beta Pictoris b, with planned next-generation radio observatories making even more sensitive observations possible.