(The Gist of Science Reporter) First-ever Image of a Multi-Planet System around a Sun-like Star Captured by ESO Telescope

[September-2020]

First-ever Image of a Multi-Planet System around a Sun-like Star Captured by ESO Telescope

The Organisation (ESO) telescope recently revealed a planetary European Space system being born in a new, stunning VLT image. Now, the same telescope, using the same instrument, has taken the first direct image of a planetary system around a star like our Sun, located about 300 light-years away and known as TYC 8998-760-1.
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.
Even though astronomers have indirectly detected thousands of planets in our galaxy, only a tiny fraction of these exoplanets have been directly imaged.
The direct imaging of two or more exoplanets around the same star is even more rare; only two such systems have been directly observed so far, both around stars markedly different from our Sun.
The new ESO’s VLT image is the first direct image of more than one exoplanet around a Sun-like star. ESO’s VLT was also the first telescope to directly image an exoplanet, back in 2004, when it captured a speck of light around a brown dwarf, a type of ‘failed’ star.
The two planets can be seen in the new image as two bright points of light distant from their parent star, which is located in the upper left of the frame. By taking different images at different times, the team was able to distinguish these planets from the background stars.
The two gas giants orbit their host star at distances of 160 and about 320 times the Earth-Sun distance. This places these planets much further away from their star than Jupiter or Saturn.
Bohn’s team imaged this system during their search for young, giant planets around stars like our Sun but far younger. The star TYC 8998-760-1 is just 17 million years old and located in the Southern constellation of Musca (The Fly). Bohn describes it as a “very young version of our own Sun.”
Further observations of this system, including with the future ESO Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), will enable astronomers to test whether these planets formed at their current location distant from the star or migrated from elsewhere. ESO’s ELT will also help probe the interaction between two young planets in the same system.