#wispit 2b

Astronomers have discovered a hungry baby planet gobbling up material around an infant star located around 430 light-years from Earth. The planet has been given the suitably cute name WISPIT 2b. WISPIT 2b is estimated to be a gas giant around the size of Jupiter and around just 5 million years old. If this seems ancient, remember our solar system is around 4.6 billion years old. The extrasolar planet, or "exoplanet," is carving a channel in the planet-forming disk of gas and dust, or "protoplanetary disk," around its young parent star WISPIT 2 like a cosmic Pac-Man as it gathers material.

“This image of the WISPIT 2 system was captured by the Magellan Telescope in Chile and the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. The protoplanet WISPIT 2b is a small purple dot to the right of a bright white ring of dust surrounding the system’s star. A fainter white ring outside of WISPIT 2b can be seen.”