What does a solar system look like before its planets settle into stable orbits and its dust clears away? For astronomers studying the young star WISPIT 2, the answer is no longer abstract. The system offers one of the clearest direct views yet of giant planets still embedded in the material that built them, with two massive worlds detected inside a broad disk of gas and dust. At roughly five million years old, the star is young enough that its surroundings still preserve the architecture of planetary construction rather than the polished outcome seen in mature systems.
The newly confirmed planet, WISPIT 2c, sits much closer to the star than the previously identified WISPIT 2b, but both worlds remain far from their host compared with the planets in the solar system. Researchers used imaging from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and spectroscopy from the interferometric technique that splits light into its component colors to test whether the inner object was truly a planet and not a clump in the disk. Signs of carbon monoxide in the spectrum helped distinguish it as a young gas giant.
That matters because directly seeing forming planets is still rare. Most exoplanets are found indirectly, through starlight dips or the gravitational pull they exert on their stars. In WISPIT 2, astronomers can examine the planets themselves while also studying the rings, gaps, and central cavity in the surrounding disk. Chloe Lawlor, lead author of the research at the University of Galway, said, “WISPIT 2 is the best look into our own past that we have to date.”
The broader significance reaches beyond one star. Planet-forming disks are turning out to be more complex than the old picture of neat, flat, orderly growth. A Nature study found that about one-third of Sun-like stars are born with misaligned planet-forming disks, while ALMA observations of GW Orionis revealed rings tilted at different angles around a triple-star system. Hubble has also captured a huge, turbulent disk nicknamed Dracula’s Chivito, showing wisps and asymmetries that suggest some nurseries are shaped by infall, nearby environments, or hidden companions. WISPIT 2 fits into this larger pattern: planet birth is observable, but it is not tidy. Rings and gaps may signal where worlds are carving paths, while disk structure can also reflect gravitational warping, chemistry, and stellar architecture.
That complexity is also chemical. Webb observations of other infant systems have shown that some disks are unexpectedly rich in carbon-bearing molecules, and in one case even a possible moon-forming disk around a giant exoplanet carried seven carbon-bearing molecules. Another young disk studied by JWST showed unusually strong carbon dioxide and very little water in the region where rocky planets might emerge. Those results suggest that the ingredients available to newborn planets can vary sharply from one system to another, even at similar early ages. WISPIT 2 may still hold more than two planets.
A narrower outer gap in the disk has already drawn attention as a possible sign of another world, potentially smaller than the two giants already detected. Whether that object appears or not, the system has become a valuable bridge between the very earliest phase of planet formation such as the first hot minerals seen condensing around HOPS-315 and the later “teenage years” of planetary systems, when debris belts and orbital reshuffling dominate. Frank Eisenhauer, project leader of GRAVITY+, described the two worlds in WISPIT 2 this way: “Finding two planets at such an early stage at the same time is almost like witnessing a rare twin birth.”
