Rare Sight! 2 Newborn Alien Planets Spotted Around Distant Star

[Judi Lynn]

By Mike Wall 21 hours ago Science & Astronomy

PDS 70 is just the second multiplanet system to be directly imaged.



PDS 70 is only the second multiplanet system to be directly imaged. Through a combination of adaptive optics and data processing, astronomers were able to cancel out the light from the central star (marked by a white star) to reveal two orbiting exoplanets. PDS 70b (lower left) is four to 17 times more massive than Jupiter, while PDS 70c (upper right) is one to 10 times more massive than Jupiter.(Image: © ESO and S. Haffert (Leiden Observatory))


We've got some more exoplanet baby pictures.

Astronomers have photographed two newborn alien worlds circling the young sun-like star PDS 70, which lies about 370 light-years from Earth, a new study reports.

PDS 70 is just the second multiplanet system to be directly imaged to date, after HR 8799, which harbors four known worlds. But HR 8799's planets are fully formed, whereas those circling PDS 70 are still growing — and still carving a gap in the disk of gas and dust that surrounds their host star.

"This is the first unambiguous detection of a two-planet system carving a disk gap," study co-author Julien Girard, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said in a statement.

The find suggests that newly forming planets cause at least some of the disk gaps that astronomers have observed in young star systems, study team members said.

More:
https://www.space.com/newborn-alien-planets-birth-photo.html

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