In a groundbreaking discovery, astronomers have directly imaged a young planet, WISPIT 2b, forming inside a gap in a protoplanetary disk around a star. This marks the first time scientists have confirmed the presence of a planet in one of these disk gaps, long suspected to be created by growing planets themselves.
According to NASA, WISPIT 2b is a massive gas giant, about five times the mass of Jupiter and just five million years old - nearly 1,000 times younger than Earth. It orbits a young star called WISPIT 2, located about 437 light-years from Earth.
Protoplanetary disks are made of gas and dust and surround young stars, acting as birthplaces for new planets. Gaps in these disks often appear as dark rings, and scientists have theorised that planets forming within the disks are responsible for carving out these spaces. Until now, however, no planet had ever been directly observed in one of these gaps.
Artist's illustration shows protoplanet WISPIT 2b gathering matter. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
The discovery was made using advanced imaging technology. The star and its surrounding disk were first observed with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Later, astronomers used the MagAO-X instrument on the Magellan Clay Telescope to capture a direct image of WISPIT 2b in Hydrogen-alpha light. This type of light is emitted when hydrogen gas falls onto a growing planet, a clear sign of active formation.
In addition, infrared observations from the Large Binocular Telescope provided more detail about the young planet. A second potential planet was also spotted closer to the star in another gap, suggesting this system may host multiple developing worlds.
This discovery offers rare, direct evidence of planet formation in action, bringing scientists closer to understanding how planetary systems, including our own, come into existence.
According to NASA, WISPIT-2b was discovered by a team led by University of Arizona astronomer Laird Close and Richelle van Capelleveen, an astronomy graduate student at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. This followed the recent discovery of the WISPIT 2 disk and ring system using the VLT, which was led by van Capelleveen.
This discovery was detailed in the paper "Wide Separation Planets in Time (WISPIT): Discovery of a Gap Hα Protoplanet WISPIT 2b with MagAO-X," published August 26, 2025 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. A second paper led by van Capelleveen and the University of Galway was published on the same day in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
