ESO Telescope Captures First Direct Image of Two Exoplanets Orbiting a Sun-Like Star

Astronomers, utilizing the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, have captured the first-ever direct image of a multi-planet system orbiting a star similar to our Sun. This groundbreaking observation, announced in July 2020, reveals two massive gas giants within the TYC 8998-760-1 system, located approximately 300 light-years from Earth. The achievement marks a significant milestone in exoplanet research, providing an unprecedented "snapshot" of a nascent solar system.

Directly imaging exoplanets is exceptionally challenging due to the overwhelming brightness of their host stars, with only a tiny fraction of known exoplanets having been observed this way. Prior to this discovery, while some multi-planet systems had been directly imaged, their central stars were markedly different from our Sun. This new image, therefore, offers a unique opportunity to study the early stages of planetary formation around a solar analogue.

The star TYC 8998-760-1 is remarkably young, at just 17 million years old, making it a "baby version" of our own 4.5-billion-year-old Sun. The two exoplanets, designated TYC 8998-760-1b and TYC 8998-760-1c, are gas giants far more massive than Jupiter, with the inner planet being about 14 times Jupiter's mass and the outer one approximately six times. They orbit their star at immense distances, 160 and 320 times the Earth-Sun distance respectively, positioning them much further out than Jupiter or Saturn in our solar system.

The imaging was made possible by the VLT’s SPHERE instrument, which employs a coronagraph to block out the star’s bright light, allowing the fainter planets to be detected in infrared light. These young planets are still hot from their formation, causing them to glow brightly in the infrared spectrum. Alexander Bohn, a PhD student at Leiden University who led the research, stated, “This discovery is a snapshot of an environment that is very similar to our Solar System, but at a much earlier stage of its evolution.” Future observations with advanced instruments like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) are anticipated to provide further insights into how these planets formed and evolved, potentially shedding light on the history of our own solar system.