Astronomers have spotted a brand-new planet in the making and, for the first time, it has been caught inside a spectacular multi-ringed disk of dust and gas.
The discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, and is giving scientists a rare glimpse of the earliest stages of planet formation.
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The infant world, named WISPIT 2b, is only about 5 million years old, making it a cosmic baby compared to Earth’s 4.5 billion years.
It's orbiting a star similar to our young Sun, and is thought to be a gas giant about five times the mass of Jupiter, still glowing in infrared light as it continues to form.
The birth cradle of planets
Stars are often surrounded by swirling clouds of gas and dust called protoplanetary disks. These disks are made out of the leftover materials from which the star formed.
Over time, small grains within the disk stick together, grow larger and snowball into fully-fledged planets.
This was the case with our own Solar System, and astronomers can see the same thing happening around distant stars throughout the Galaxy.
These disks sometimes show striking features: rings and gaps sculpted by newborn planets as they orbit their host star and push aside the surrounding material.
And that’s what WISPIT 2b seems to be doing. Its host star is at the centre of a dusty disk about 380 times wider than the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Within this disk, the new planet appears to be carving out a gap as it accretes hydrogen gas, forming a thick atmosphere.
WISPIT 2b, a first-of-its-kind detection
While astronomers have previously seen hints of young planets in disks, WISPIT 2b is the first unambiguous detection inside a multi-ringed disk.
It’s also the second planet ever confirmed at this early evolutionary stage around a Sun-like star.
The newly-discovered exoplanet was captured in multiple ways.
VLT’s SPHERE instrument revealed the glowing dot of the young planet in near-infrared light.
The Magellan telescope in Chile detected hydrogen gas falling onto it; a clear sign that the planet is still forming.
"We used really short snapshot observations of many young stars – only a few minutes per object – to determine if we could see a little dot of light next to them that is caused by a planet," says Dr Christian Ginski, lecturer at the School of Natural Sciences, University of Galway in Ireland and second author of the study.
"However, in the case of this star, we instead detected a completely unexpected and exceptionally beautiful multi-ringed dust disk.
"When we saw this multi-ringed disk for the first time, we knew we had to try and see if we could detect a planet within it, so we quickly asked for follow-up observations."
Why this discovery matters
The discovery of WISPIT 2b helps confirm a long-standing theory: that the gaps in protoplanetary disks are carved out by newborn planets.
For astronomers, it’s like catching our own Solar System in its earliest days.
Because WISPIT 2b is still actively feeding on gas and dust, it offers a natural laboratory for studying how giant planets grow, how they shape their surrounding disks and how systems like our Solar System come into being.
"Discovering this planet was an amazing experience - we were incredibly lucky," says Richelle van Capelleveen, an PhD student from Leiden University who led the study.
"WISPIT 2, a young version of our Sun, is located in a little-studied group of young stars, and we did not expect to find such a spectacular system. This system will likely be a benchmark for years to come."
A companion study by the University of Arizona was led by Professor Laird Close, where observations were triggered based on the information shared about the new disk by the University of Galway and Leiden University team.
