Astronomers Confirm Second Protoplanet Around WISPIT 2, Making It Only the Second Known System With Multiple Forming Worlds
Using the upgraded GRAVITY+ instrument on the ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer, researchers have directly detected a second protoplanet forming in the disk around the young star WISPIT 2, located 437 light-years from Earth.
Overview
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of a second protoplanet forming in the disk of gas and dust around WISPIT 2, a young star approximately 437 light-years from Earth and only about 5 million years old. The discovery, published March 24 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, makes WISPIT 2 only the second star system ever observed with multiple planets still in the process of forming, according to Scientific American. The first was PDS 70, where two protoplanets were confirmed in 2018.
What We Know
The newly confirmed planet, designated WISPIT 2c, has a mass roughly 10 times that of Jupiter and orbits its parent star at approximately 14 astronomical units, about four times closer than the previously known WISPIT 2b, as reported by Phys.org. WISPIT 2b, first identified in August 2025, is a gas giant with about five times Jupiter’s mass orbiting at roughly 57 to 60 astronomical units from the star.
The detection of WISPIT 2c was made possible by the upgraded GRAVITY+ instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The instrument’s enhanced adaptive optics allowed the team to resolve the faint signal of the inner protoplanet despite being roughly 1,000 times dimmer than its host star, according to Phys.org. The protoplanet’s spectrum revealed a clear detection of carbon monoxide, a characteristic atmospheric signature of young gas giant planets.
The research was led by Chloe Lawlor, a doctoral student at the University of Galway in Ireland, in collaboration with scientists from Leiden Observatory, the University of Arizona, and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. Frank Eisenhauer, director at the Max Planck Institute and a key figure behind GRAVITY+, described the observation as being “almost like witnessing a rare twin birth,” according to Phys.org.
What We Don’t Know
The WISPIT 2 system may harbor additional planets beyond the two confirmed so far. The protoplanetary disk contains distinctive gaps and ring structures that suggest other bodies are actively accreting material. “These structures suggest that more planets are currently forming, which we will eventually detect,” Lawlor said, as reported by Scientific American. A third candidate, potentially Saturn-mass, has been tentatively identified but not yet confirmed.
Whether the WISPIT 2 system will evolve into something resembling our own solar system remains an open question. At roughly 5 million years old, the star is nearly 1,000 times younger than the Sun, and the disk still contains abundant material for further planetary accretion. Future observations with the ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction, are expected to provide sharper views of the system’s architecture.
Why It Matters
With thousands of confirmed exoplanets cataloged to date, direct observations of planets caught in the act of formation remain extraordinarily rare. Before WISPIT 2, PDS 70 was the only star system where multiple protoplanets had been directly imaged. The addition of a second such system gives researchers their first opportunity for comparative study of planet formation environments.
Jason Wang, an astronomer at Northwestern University who was not involved in the study, told Scientific American that the discovery is significant precisely because it doubles the sample size for multi-protoplanet systems. WISPIT 2 also appears to have a more extensive and structured ring of matter than PDS 70, potentially offering a clearer window into how gas giants carve out their orbital paths.
Lawlor characterized the system as “the best look into our own past that we have to date,” according to Space.com.