Growing baby planet captured for first time in dark circle

By Dean Murray

A team of astronomers has detected for the first time a growing planet inside a ring.

The planet, named WISPIT 2b, is outside our Solar System and embedded in a cleared gap of a multi-ringed disc of dust and gas.

The researchers, led by University of Arizona astronomer Laird Close and Richelle van Capelleveen, an astronomy graduate student at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, discovered the unique exoplanet using powerful telescopes.

WISPIT 2b, labeled a protoplanet because it is accumulating material and growing into a fully realized planet, is a gas giant about five times as massive as Jupiter .

The massive protoplanet is around 5 million years old, or almost 1,000 times younger than the Earth, and about 437 light-years from Earth .

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