Two giant gas planets swing around a star about the same size as our sun 300 light-years away from Earth – and now you can see them doing it.That’s because astronomers have captured the first photo ever of more than one planet orbiting a sun-like star.The star is just 17 million years old – a mere fraction of our sun’s 4.6 billion years in the cosmos. They’re much heavier, though.

The four planets closest to the sun, called the rocky planets, were born from the same material in the same era.

The AP is solely responsible for all content.Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. This can … If the pinpricks of light were too close together, they could blur and become indistinguishable in photos.A planned telescope, appropriately called the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), could offer more insight into the planetary system. Other bright dots, which are … If the two objects were planets they’d move with the star, and if they were background stars we’d see the star move quite a bit relative to them.The objects did in fact move with the star!

Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to capture two planets orbiting a young Sun-like star. News

By contrast, our sun is 4.5 billion years old.The two newly discovered gas giants around this young star orbit at a much greater distance than Jupiter and Saturn do our sun — requiring a few thousand years to complete one revolution, or calendar year. The two planets are gas giants that are much more massive than our local ones, with one measuring as much as 14 Jupiters and the other six. Only two other multiplanet star systems have been directly imaged — The star itself has most of its light blocked by a coronagraph, a disk of metal in the middle of the camera’s field of view, reducing its glare substantially, allowing the much fainter planets to be seen.At this age, planets are still glowing due to the heat from their formation, making them bright in the infrared, where these images were taken. This Will … To directly spot two of them around the same star is even rarer. The main mirror will span 128 feet (39 meters), more than four times the size of the Very Large Telescope, making it the “the world’s biggest eye on the sky,” according to the ESO.For now, there is no evidence that this young star has more planets, but “it is certainly possible and they might just be too faint,” Bohn said.The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. 8,458 Followers, 803 Following, 371 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from TWO PLANETS BERLIN CITY (@twoplanetsberlin) “This is the first time astronomers were able to capture such a shot,” he said in an email.The observations can help scientists better understand the evolution of our own solar system.Astronomers typically confirm worlds around other stars by observing brief but periodic dimming of the starlight, indicating an orbiting planet. This baby sun and its two giant gas planets are fairly close by galactic standards at 300 light-years away.The snapshot — released Wednesday — was taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert.What makes this group shot so appealing is it’s a “very young version of our own sun,” said Alexander Bohn of the Netherlands’ Leiden University, who led the study.Bohn said he was “extremely excited” about the discovery. It’s slated to measure 39 meters (128 feet) across and is scheduled for first light in 2025. The system is young, just 17 million years old, and about 310 light years away. Our own beloved star can fit six non-interfering planets in its zone. They also weigh in with greater masses than our own outer planets.The researchers took multiple images of this youthful solar system over the past year to verify the findings, while reviewing older data. Neptune is about 6 billion kilometers from the Sun, roughly 30 times the Earth-Sun distance, so these two planets are This animation shows the orbits of the gas giant planets around TYC 8998-760-1 (assuming they’re circular) compared to the average size of Pluto’s orbit (inner yellow circle), emphasizing just how far out they are from their star.