This is the first picture of a sunlike star with multiple exoplanets
For the first time, an exoplanet family around a sunlike star has had its portrait taken. Astronomers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to snap a photo of two giant planets orbiting a young star with about the same mass as the sun, researchers report July 22 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The star, called TYC 8998-760-1, is about 300 light-years away in the constellation Musca. At just 17 million years old, the planetary family is a youngster compared with the 4-billion-year-old solar system. Although astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets, most aren’t observed directly. Instead they are spotted as shadows crossing in front of their stars, or inferred as unseen forces tugging at their stars. Only a few tens of planets have been photographed around other stars, and just two of those stars have more than one planet. Neither is sunlike, says astronomer Alexander Bohn of Leiden University in the Netherlands...