Baby Planet Clears Gap in Young Protoplanetary Disk
An international team of astronomers has directly imaged a newborn planet, WISPIT 2b, orbiting within a gap it cleared in the multi-ringed protoplanetary disk of the 5-million-year-old star TYC 5709-354-1, located 430 light-years away. This marks the first clear detection of an embedded planet in such a cleared gap, with observations revealing its orbital motion and hydrogen gas accretion, confirming it as a rare example of a growing protoplanet.