The groundbreaking telescope image revealing a baby exoplanet being born actually refers to observations of multiple young planetary systems, with two notable examples: WISPIT 2b and the system around the star PDS 70.
WISPIT 2b: A Protoplanet in a Disk Gap
The most recent widely-reported image shows the protoplanet WISPIT 2b, which is a direct visual confirmation of a planet forming within a cleared-out gap of a protoplanetary disk.
Planet Details: WISPIT 2b is a gas giant estimated to be about five times the mass of Jupiter and only about five million years old.
Host Star: The planet orbits the young star WISPIT 2, located approximately 437 light-years from Earth.
Discovery Instrument: The planet was detected using the Magellan Adaptive Optics System eXtreme (MagAO-X) instrument on the Magellan Telescope in Chile and confirmed with the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona.
Key Evidence: The image captured the faint glow of H-alpha light, which is the spectral signature of hydrogen gas heating up as it falls onto the forming planet from its surroundings—a process known as accretion. This directly confirms the planet is actively growing.
Location: WISPIT 2b is seen as a small dot nestled within a ring-shaped, dust-free gap in the disk surrounding its star, validating the long-held theory that growing planets clear these gaps. Astronomers also spotted a candidate for a second, inner planet in another disk gap, dubbed CC1.
PDS 70 System: The First Directly Imaged Protoplanets
Prior to WISPIT 2b, the most famous example of a planetary system caught in the act of formation is around the star PDS 70. This system was the first where two protoplanets were directly imaged.
Star: PDS 70 is a young T Tauri star, about 370 light-years away, and approximately 5.4 million years old.
Planets: The system hosts two confirmed gas giants, PDS 70b (discovered in 2018) and PDS 70c (discovered in 2019), both carving paths through the star's protoplanetary disk.
PDS 70b Details: Has a mass of about 3 times that of Jupiter, orbits at roughly 20 AU (similar to Uranus's distance in our solar system), and is thought to have a cloudy atmosphere with a temperature of around
PDS 70c Details: Has a mass of about 2 times that of Jupiter, orbits further out at about 34 AU, and is in a near 1:2 orbital resonance with PDS 70b.
Circumplanetary Disks: Both planets have evidence of surrounding material, with PDS 70c being the first exoplanet confirmed to have a circumplanetary disk, which is essentially a moon-forming disk.
Discovery Instrument: The planets were initially discovered using the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, and later observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Keck Observatory, and ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array).
This video gives more detail on the earlier discovery of the PDS 70 system.