By Aysu Bicer
LONDON (AA) - An international team of astronomers has discovered a new planet, WISPIT 2b, orbiting a young star about 430 light-years away from Earth.
The planet, believed to be a gas giant similar in size to Jupiter, is estimated to be only around five million years old -- a very early stage in planetary terms.
Researchers say the finding offers a rare glimpse into the process of planet formation.
The discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
The study was led by scientists at Leiden University in the Netherlands, the University of Galway in Ireland, and the University of Arizona in the US, and has been published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Irish broadcaster RTE reported.
Christian Ginski, lecturer at the School of Natural Sciences at the University of Galway and second author of the study, said: "We used these really short snapshot observations of many young stars -- only a few minutes per object -- to determine if we could see a little dot of light next to them that is caused by a planet.
"However, in the case of this star, we instead detected a completely unexpected and exceptionally beautiful multi-ringed dust disk.
"When we saw this multi-ringed disk for the first time, we knew we had to try and see if we could detect a planet within it, so we quickly asked for follow-up observations."
Scientists believe the planet was discovered within the dust disk that surrounds a young star resembling an early version of our own Sun.