Newborn planet captured in the early stages after birth

Astronomers have imaged a newborn gas giant, WISPIT 2b, that sits inside a wide gap in a disk of dust and gas around a young, sun-like star. The event was captured with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO VLT).

The planet shows up as a compact source tucked into the dark lane between bright rings. It moves from epoch to epoch in a way that fits an orbit. The host star, WISPIT 2, is only about 5 million years old, so this is a snapshot of a system that is still assembling.

Richelle van Capelleveen of Leiden University led the research team that reported the discovery. The work brought together researchers from multiple institutions who combined their expertise to confirm the planet’s presence.

Planet forming in its birth environment

Planet catalogs now list nearly 6,000 confirmed worlds around stars other than the Sun, a total tracked by NASA’s Exoplanet Archive in a recent update.

Most of those planets were not seen directly, but inferred from how they tug on or dim the light from their stars.

Catching a forming planet in its birth environment is rare. It presents an opportunity for scientists to test ideas about how giant planets grow and how their gravity sculpts rings and gaps.

Seeing the planet and the disk together also ties structure to cause. That link is essential if we want to explain why planetary systems end up with such different architectures.

Telescopes revealed the young planet

The Very Large Telescope’s SPHERE camera isolated faint light from the star’s surroundings and revealed a multi-ringed disk that stretches to roughly 35 billion miles (56 billion kilometers).

The rings are separated by gaps, and one of those gaps hosts the compact source identified as the planet.

Across multiple observing dates, the point source shifted position in a way that matches Keplerian motion. This means that its motion was governed by gravity in a bound orbit.

The team also showed that the source tracks with the star in the sky, rather than drifting like a background object.

In near infrared images, the planet glows from residual heat left over from formation. That glow stands out against the fainter, polarized light that is scattered by tiny dust grains in the disk.

A planet soon after birth

A companion letter reports a strong H-alpha signal from the planet, the deep red light emitted when excited hydrogen drops to a lower energy state. That detection, made with the MagAO-X instrument in Chile, is a hallmark of gas falling onto the world.

Accretion means the planet is still building its atmosphere. The visible light signal complements the infrared image and nails down the planet’s identity.

Together, these measurements show a consistent picture of a young giant that is still pulling in material from its surroundings. They also give observers multiple ways to follow how its brightness and environment change over time.

Planet shapes surrounding dust rings

The authors show that WISPIT 2b is the first unambiguous planet seen inside a multi-ringed disk. That combination creates a clean experiment for studying how a single, massive body shapes nearby dust and gas.

The outer disk extends to about 35 billion miles (56 billion kilometers) from the star, while the planet orbits near 5.3 billion miles (8.5 billion kilometers). Its gravity likely helps keep the surrounding lane partly cleared by exchanging angular momentum with material in the gap.

Because the disk is bright and well-resolved, researchers can measure ring locations, gap widths, and the vertical height of the scattering surface.

Those geometric clues let theorists estimate disk viscosity, a key parameter that controls how quickly disks spread and how efficiently planets migrate.

Models of giant planet formation

In 2018, astronomers confirmed the presence of PDS 70 b inside a large inner cavity, the first clear case of an embedded protoplanet. That system later turned out to host a second forming planet.

WISPIT 2b now adds a sun-like system with a clearly ringed outer disk and a forming giant farther from its star. It offers a second, different test case for models of giant planet formation and disk evolution.

A benchmark for future research

Astronomers often use the astronomical unit (AU) to express distances in young systems, where 1 AU equals about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). Converting to everyday units keeps the scale clear without introducing new jargon.

At roughly 57 AU, WISPIT 2b circles the star at about 5.3 billion miles (8.5 billion kilometers). The disk itself reaches out to around 35 billion miles, which is large enough to let observers resolve multiple rings and gaps from Earth.

Those numbers come from direct imaging and from fitting the planet’s small apparent motion relative to the star over several observation dates. The fit points to a bound orbit that is consistent with the gap geometry seen in the disk.

“Discovering this planet was an amazing experience,” said van Capelleveen. She emphasized how the system’s clarity makes it an ideal benchmark for future work

That practicality matters. A clean case lets multiple teams compare models to the same measurements and make steady progress.

Imaging planet formation

Follow up with ALMA can trace gas motions near the gap and look for subtle kinks that reveal how the planet perturbs its surroundings. JWST spectroscopy can probe the planet’s thermal emission and search for molecules in its young atmosphere.

More precise astrometry will tighten the orbit and, with time, allow a dynamical mass estimate. That mass can be compared to the gap’s width to check how well current theories predict the link between planet mass and disk structure.

The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Image credit: C. Ginski/R. van Capelleveen et al.

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