
10/01/2025
What looks like a ripple in space is actually today’s “Picture of the Week”: a newborn planet carving through the dusty cradle around its star. Captured with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, this is the first clear detection of a planet embedded in a multi-ring protoplanetary disc — the birthplace of planets.
In these discs, gas and dust swirl around young stars, forming rings that often hint at hidden planets. Tiny particles collide, clump, and under gravity’s pull grow into embryo planets that “feed” on surrounding material. The discovery of WISPIT-2b — a planet about five times the mass of Jupiter orbiting a star similar to a young Sun — confirms a long-standing theory: the gaps in these discs can be carved by growing planets.
The find was published in a study led by Richelle van Capelleveen (University of Leiden), with collaborators from the University of Galway and the University of Arizona. The planet was detected with the SPHERE instrument on the VLT, which blocks starlight and corrects atmospheric turbulence to reveal crisp details of nearby structures. To confirm its planetary nature, the MagAO-X adaptive optics system on the Magellan telescope in Chile detected hydrogen gas falling onto WISPIT-2b — direct evidence that the planet is still accreting material from its surroundings.
This marks an important step in understanding how planets form: not just in theory, but now observed in real time.
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