Beta Pictoris b is a young exoplanet about 12 times as massive as Jupiter, with an orbit nearly twice as long. Now, a timelapse video of the planet’s nearly 23-year orbit lets you see most of that journey in just ten seconds.
Researchers think they’ve gotten a glimpse at how gas giants like Jupiter form, thanks to a remarkable image of a distant star system.
A group of radio telescopes in the Chilean desert was aimed at a young star system 400 light years away when it detected something unusual: a cloud of debris chasing a planet along the same orbit. The debris could be a planet in the midst of being born or the remains of one that already exists, making this the first…
Astronomical phenomena tend to occur over timespans that dwarf our human scale—a galaxy changes over millions and billions of years, not decades.