Astronomers Just Spotted a Baby Planet—And It’s Still Glowing from Birth!

A young gas giant, named WISPIT 2b, was found in the multi-ringed disk surrounding a star that resembles the Sun. Studying early planetary evolution is made possible by its active formation.

Co-led by scientists from the University of Galway, an international team of astronomers has made the unexpected discovery of a planet that had never been discovered before.

It is thought to be around 5 million years old, a gas giant roughly the size of Jupiter, and was discovered in its early stages of development around a young star like our Sun.

The study, which was conducted by Leiden University with assistance from the University of Arizona and the University of Galway, was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters journal.

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), one of the most sophisticated astronomical observatories in the world, situated in Chile’s Atacama Desert, was used to make this discovery.

The European Southern Observatory, which is widely considered to be the top international astronomy organization, released a powerful image of the discovery as its picture of the week to commemorate the study’s publication.

WISPIT 2b is the name given to the recently discovered planet.

Dr. Christian Ginski, lecturer at the School of Natural Sciences, University of Galway, and second author of the study, said, “We used these 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. 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,” Dr. Ginski added.

This is only the second time a confirmed planet has been found around a young Sun at this early evolutionary stage. Dr. Ginski was part of a research team that found the first one in 2018.

In addition to being the first clear-cut planet detection in a multi-ringed disk, WISPIT 2b is the perfect lab for researching planet-disk interaction and its evolution.

Since the planet is still hot and glowing from its early formation phase, it was photographed in near-infrared light, which is the kind of view one would see through night-vision goggles.

The young proto-planet embedded in a disk gap was spectacularly and clearly photographed by the team from Leiden University and the University of Galway. Additionally, they verified that the planet is in orbit around its parent star.

A team from the University of Arizona also used a specially made instrument to detect the planet in visible light. The planet is still actively accreting gas as it forms its atmosphere, as evidenced by this detection at a particular wavelength or color of light.

The international team’s five-year observational study, which included the detection of WISPIT 2b, aimed to determine whether wide orbit gas giant planets are more prevalent around younger or older stars. As a result, the new planet was unexpectedly discovered.

Planets are born in the dust and gas-rich disks that surround young stars. With a variety of structures, including spiral arms and rings, which scientists think are connected to planets forming inside them, they can have a pretty amazing appearance. The radius of the disk surrounding WISPIT 2b is 380 astronomical units, or roughly 380 times that of the Earth-Sun distance.

Dr. Ginski concluded, “Capturing an image of these forming planets has proven extremely challenging, and it gives us a real chance to understand why the many thousands of older exoplanet systems out there look so diverse and so different from our own solar system. I think many of our colleagues who study planet formation will take a close look at this system in the years to come.”