A telescope was able to capture a portrait of another solar system with two planets orbiting around a star. Sound familiar? It’s like our solar system (but with fewer planets involved)! The portrait was taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The sun and the two giant gas planets are fairly close to each other, as US News detailed:
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. “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. Such indirect observations have identified thousands planets in our Milky Way galaxy.
image via US News