These observations were made with the SPHERE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). SPHERE can directly image exoplanets by correcting atmospheric turbulence and blocking the light from the central star. This composite image contains SPHERE observations carried out at different epochs. The outermost planet, WISPIT 2b, was discovered first, whereas WISPIT 2c, which orbits much closer to the star, was confirmed afterwards. Credit: ESO/C. Lawlor, R. F. van Capelleveen et al.
by ojosdelostigres
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Image and text from this post
[https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso2604b/](https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso2604b/)
Article about the planets and WISPIT 2
[https://www.space.com/astronomy/exoplanets/scientists-discover-mirror-of-our-solar-system-in-2-exoplanets-forming-around-a-star](https://www.space.com/astronomy/exoplanets/scientists-discover-mirror-of-our-solar-system-in-2-exoplanets-forming-around-a-star)
The fact that we have the capability to take images of entire exoplanetary systems is so cool.
Wait, so we can now directly see planets orbiting other stars? Are these the best pictures we have of exoplanets? There’s so much space discovery going on it’s hard to keep up with. Looking at clear images of allllll the different galaxies, and seeing many variations there are, and being able to watch them as they collide is fucking nuts.
It is just wild how a few different gases and other molecules can bump around and smush together, and then we end up with giant colored gas clouds, spiral galaxies, black holes, supernovas, big clusters of bright stars that look like they don’t have messy gas clouds with them(still galaxies?), and maybe have no black hole holding them together— just a messy mixture of their gravities adding together.. and then we can look at galaxies and I realize that the brighter gassy looking spots are often actually just hundreds of billions of stars… fuck me.
And lest we forget that tons(if not most?) of those stars have their own solar systems.. and then we recently find that the building blocks of life are just floating around on asteroids that didn’t come from outside our solar system… they just originated with us. I would wager that life is all over the place.