Astronomers caught a 'sonogram' of a giant planet that’s still growing inside its mother star’s dust cloud.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
Direct spectroscopic confirmation of the young embedded proto-planet WISPIT 2c
arXiv · 2603.22085
The Takeaway
Because planets take millions of years to form, we rarely catch them in the act. This study provides direct confirmation of a massive gas giant still embedded in its natal ring of dust, offering a 'living laboratory' to watch the chaotic birth of a solar system in real-time.
From the abstract
WISPIT 2 is a nearby young star with a multi-ringed disk which was recently confirmed to host a ~4.9 MJup gas giant planet embedded in a large (60 au) gap at a radial separation of 57 au from the host star. We confirm and characterise a second, close-in planet in the WISPIT 2 system using a combination of new VLT/SPHERE H-band dual-polarisation imaging and VLTI/GRAVITY K-band interferometric observations of the WISPIT 2 system. The GRAVITY detection is consistent with a point-like source while i