🪐 First direct #imaging of a forming #exoplanet carving multiple rings in its accretion disk! Van Capelleveen et al. (2025) reveal a ~5 MJup #protoplanet 57 AU (~8.5 billion km, farther than Pluto) from its star (#WISPIT2, ~133 pc) with #VLT/SPHERE, showing #Keplerian motion and Hα #accretion. A rare, striking view of planet–disk interaction in real time 💫
#WISPIT2b: #Exoplanet Carves Gap in #BirthDisk
#Astronomy #Picture of the Day
The European Southern Observatory (@esoastronomy) has once again proved that the most powerful telescopes aren't necessarily always in space.
Meet #WISPIT2b, a newborn planet about five times the mass of Jupiter. It's the bright dot just below and right of the center of this infrared image made with ESO's 8.2-meter Very Large Telescope in Chile.
The swirl of light dominating the image is a disc of dust and gas around the planet's host star, whose overwhelming light has been canceled out (leaving the dark hole in the center). WISPIT 2b condensed from this disc and is now gobbling up material around it, forming the dark lane in which it appears.
While such gaps are seen in other such 'protoplanetary' discs, theorized to be cleared by planets, this is the first time we have unambiguously seen the planet doing the clearing. It's a key confirmation of the process by which it is believed that the #planets in our own Solar System formed.
Read more on: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2534a/
Fabrizio Musacchio
Tom Zijlstra
Khurram Wadee ✅
Dr. John Barentine FRAS