{"id":56728,"date":"2025-10-02T18:05:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T18:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/56728\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T18:05:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T18:05:16","slug":"growing-baby-planet-captured-for-first-time-in-dark-circle-features","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/56728\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing baby planet captured for first time in dark circle | Features"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image\"<\/p>\n

(Laird Close\/Univ. of Arizona via SWNS)<\/p>\n

By Talker<\/p>\n

By Dean Murray<\/p>\n

A team of astronomers has detected for the first time a growing planet inside a ring.<\/p>\n

The planet, named WISPIT 2b, is outside our Solar System<\/a> and embedded in a cleared gap of a multi-ringed disc of dust and gas.<\/p>\n

The researchers, led by University of Arizona<\/a> astronomer Laird Close and Richelle van Capelleveen, an astronomy graduate student at Leiden Observatory<\/a> in the Netherlands, discovered the unique exoplanet using powerful telescopes.<\/p>\n

WISPIT 2b, labeled a protoplanet because it is accumulating material and growing into a fully realized planet, is a gas giant about five times as massive as Jupiter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The massive protoplanet is around 5 million years old, or almost 1,000 times younger than the Earth, and about 437 light-years from Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These masses were inferred, in part, from the thermal infrared light observed by the University of Arizona\u2019s 8.4-metre Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham in south-eastern Arizona with the help of U of A astronomy graduate student Gabriel Weible.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

(Laird Close\/Univ. of Arizona via SWNS)<\/p>\n

Gabriel Weible said: “It’s a bit like what our own Jupiter and Saturn would have looked like when they were 5,000 times younger than they are now.<\/p>\n

“The planets in the WISPIT-2 system appear to be about 10 times more massive than our own gas giants and more spread out. But the overall appearance is likely not so different from what a nearby ‘alien astronomer’ could have seen in a ‘baby picture’ of our Solar System taken 4.5 billion years ago.”<\/p>\n

Laird Close added: “Dozens of theory papers have been written about these observed disc gaps being caused by protoplanets, but no one’s ever found a definitive one until today.<\/p>\n

“It’s been a point of tension, actually, in the literature and in astronomy in general, that we have these really dark gaps, but we cannot detect the faint exoplanets in them.<\/p>\n

“Many have doubted that protoplanets can make these gaps, but now we know that in fact, they can.”<\/p>\n

The discovery is detailed in papers published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Laird Close\/Univ. of Arizona via SWNS) By Talker By Dean Murray A team of astronomers has detected for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[47585,4645,8864,20671,5964,47584,30684,47589,47588,4646,8859,8860,2061,111,139,69,8867,8866,8865,19794,8863,47582,6251,36457,47586,147,8861,3145,2618,5436,47587,47583],"class_list":["post-56728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-astronomical-objects","tag-astronomy","tag-bodies-of-the-solar-system","tag-dean-murray","tag-exoplanet","tag-exoplanetology","tag-gas-giant","tag-gould-belt","tag-interstellar-media","tag-jupiter","tag-local-interstellar-cloud","tag-natural-sciences","tag-nature","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-observational-astronomy","tag-outer-space","tag-physical-sciences","tag-planet","tag-planetary-science","tag-planetary-mass-objects","tag-planets","tag-protoplanet","tag-rings-of-saturn","tag-science","tag-sky","tag-solar-system","tag-space-science","tag-stars","tag-stellar-astronomy","tag-substellar-objects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}