A baby planet has been spotted nestled inside a ring around its young parent star, offering a never-before-seen view of planet formation.

Using the Magellan Telescope in Chile and the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, astronomers have captured a striking new view of a protoplanet named WISPIT 2b — a gas giant in its infancy estimated to be about five times more massive than Jupiter and just five million years old. The baby planet can be seen within a ring-shaped gap in the dusty disk surrounding its young parent star, named WISPIT 2, as it gathers material to grow into a fully realized planet.

The new image marks the first direct evidence of a growing planet observed within the very ring gap that it's shaping, confirming a longstanding prediction of how gas giants form, according to

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