Newly Discovered Planet Offers Rare Glimpse into Early Planetary Formation
Galway, Ireland – In a groundbreaking discovery, an international team of astronomers led by researchers at the University of Galway has detected a young gas giant planet, designated Wispit 2B, forming around a sun-like star. This finding, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, provides an unprecedented prospect to study the earliest stages of planet evolution.
The planet, estimated to be approximately 5 million years old, is comparable in size to jupiter – and roughly five times more massive – offering a unique window into the birth of gas giants similar to those in our own solar system.The discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) located in the Atacama Desert of Chile.
(Image: Dusty disk images around young stars. Among some concentric rings we see a small dot of light (indicated by a white circle). This is a newborn planet image, the possibility of a giant gas similar to Jupiter in our own solar system, but about 5 times bigger. Credit: C. Ginski/R. Van Capelleveen et al.)
What sets Wispit 2B apart is it’s location within a “multi-complex” dust disk – a swirling structure of gas and dust surrounding the young star. This is only the second confirmed planet detection at this early stage of development around a sun-like star; the first was discovered in 2018 by a team including researchers involved in this latest study. Crucially, Wispit 2B is the first planet detected without ambiguity within such a complex disk, making it an ideal “laboratory” for understanding how planets interact
