Astronomers witness the birth of a new solar system
March 24, 2026
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Astronomers witness the birth of a new solar system
The decades since scientists confirmed the first planet orbiting another star have been full of discoveries, but it is rare to observe a new solar system as it forms.
An image of WISPIT 2 taken by the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Astronomers have just discovered a second gas giant recently formed from the star’s protoplanetary disk.
ESO/C. Lawlor, RF van Capelleveen et al.
Planets around other stars can help answer one of the biggest mysteries: how did we get here? How did the rotating disk of matter left by the birth of our sun form our planet and its seven neighbors? Typically, astronomers find planets of similar ages to those in our solar system, but that is starting to change.
In a study published today in the Astrophysical journal lettersastronomers reveal a baby solar system forming around a star some 437 light-years from Earth – only the second to be confirmed. The first, PDS 70, was discovered in 2018.
“This is a really exciting discovery,” says Jason Wang, an astronomer at Northwestern University who was not involved in the research. “In astronomy, we often joke that when we have a sample of one, we have an anomaly, but when we have a sample of two, we have a population.”
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Some of the astronomers behind the new study revealed last year that the star, called WISPIT 2, was surrounded by a protoplanet, WISPIT 2b. It was the first time that a baby planet had been photographed in a protoplanetary disk. They now think there are two gas giant planets, the second being about 10 times larger than Jupiter.
And the authors think there are more protoplanets to be found around WISPIT 2. The star appears to be surrounded by a ring of material more extensive and structured than PDS 70. And further into the disk, astronomers spotted a third, smaller break in the material, a tantalizing indication that the material may have already collapsed into a planet closer to the size of Saturn. The new discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and the authors hope its successor, the Extremely Large Telescope, will be able to take photos of the hypothetical third baby.
“These structures suggest that more planets are forming now, which we will eventually detect,” says Chloe Lawlor, a Ph.D. student at the University of Galway in Ireland and lead author of the study. By studying this new planetary nursery and others like it, astronomers hope to better understand how our own solar system came to be.
For her part, Lawlor is surprised to have conducted such a groundbreaking study as a young scientist. “A lot of times people at my career stage have a lot of self-doubt,” she says. “I hope this discovery will help others realize that even if they don’t know everything yet, they still know enough to accomplish great things.”
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