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Faint new planet is revealed around a young star after a decade in hiding
ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos • • science
Key Points:
- Astronomers have discovered the faintest planet ever directly imaged from Earth, orbiting the young star Beta Pictoris, after more than a decade of searching.
- Two independent teams, one using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and the other NASA’s Webb Space Telescope, detected the cold gas giant within days of each other late last year.
- The newly found planet is slightly larger than Jupiter, takes 91 years to orbit its star, and resides in a star system approximately 20 million years old, offering insights into early planetary system development.
- Beta Pictoris is located 63 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pictor, and the discovery adds to the fewer than 100 exoplanets identified through direct imaging out of over 6,000 confirmed exoplanets.
- The teams kept their findings separate to avoid bias, and their combined work was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, highlighting the potential for further study of this young planetary system.
