Two Planets Found Forming in Disc around Young Star WISPIT 2 in Aquila | ESO
A Solar System in the making?
Astronomers have observed two planets forming in the disc around a young star named WISPIT 2. Having previously detected one planet, the team have now employed European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescopes to confirm the presence of another. These observations, and the unique structure of the disc around the star, indicate that the WISPIT 2 system could resemble a young Solar System.
Distance from Earth: ~430 light years
“WISPIT 2 is the best look into our own past that we have to date,” says Chloe Lawlor, PhD student at the University of Galway, Ireland, and lead author of the study published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The system is only the second known, after PDS 70, where two planets have been directly observed in the process of forming around their host star. Unlike PDS 70, however, WISPIT 2 has a very extended planet-forming disc with distinctive gaps and rings. "These structures suggest that more planets are currently forming, which we will eventually detect,” Lawlor says.
"WISPIT 2 gives us a critical laboratory not just to observe the formation of a single planet but an entire planetary system," says Christian Ginski, study co-author and researcher at the University of Galway. With such observations, astronomers aim to better understand how baby planetary systems develop into mature ones, like our own.
The first newborn planet found in the system—named WISPIT 2b—was detected last year with a mass almost five times that of Jupiter and orbiting the central star at around 60 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. “This detection of a new world in formation really showed the amazing potential of our current instrumentation,” said Richelle van Capelleveen, PhD student at Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands, and leader of the previous study. After an additional object was identified near the star [1], measurements made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the VLT Interferometer (VLTI) confirmed its planetary nature. The new planet—WISPIT 2c—is four times closer to the central star and is twice as massive as WISPIT 2b. Both planets are gas giants, like the outer planets in our Solar System.
To confirm the existence of WISPIT 2c the team employed the SPHERE instrument on ESO's VLT to capture an image of the object. The team then used the GRAVITY+ instrument on the VLTI to confirm that the object was indeed a planet. "Critically our study made use of the recent upgrade to GRAVITY+ without which we would not have been able to get such a clear detection of the planet so close to its star," says Guillaume Bourdarot, study co-author and researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany.
Both planets in WISPIT 2 appear in clear gaps within the disc of dust and gas circling the young star. These gaps result from each planet's development. Particles in the disc accumulate, their gravity pulling in more material until an embryo planet forms. The remaining material, around each gap, creates distinctive dust rings in the disc.
Besides the gaps that the two planets were found in, there is at least one smaller gap farther out in the WISPIT 2 disc. "We suspect there may be a third planet carving out this gap" says Lawlor, "potentially of Saturn mass owing to the gap’s being much narrower and shallower". The team are eager to make follow-up observations, with Ginski noting that “with ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope, we may be able to directly image such a planet.”
Notes: [1] The first hints of the presence of a second planet came from observations made with the University of Arizona's MagAO-X on the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes in Chile and the University of Virginia's LMIRcam on the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer in the USA.
Release Date: March 24, 2026
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