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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Science [sciencemag.org]:

Astronomers know of thousands of planets around other stars, yet only a handful have been imaged directly. The existence of the rest is inferred by how they affect their stars.

Now the world’s largest optical telescope has directly spied a new planetary system—the first time more than one planet has been imaged around a star like our Sun. Astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to observe the Sun-like star TYC 8998-760-1, 300 light-years from Earth. Using the VLT’s Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument, which is equipped with an optical mask called a coronagraph to block out a star’s light, they were able to see two planets orbiting it [doi.org] (pictured above), as reported today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Some light from the star can be seen in the image above (center left) as well as the two giant planets (right) and a scattering of background stars.

The star system is very young at 17 million years old.

Original Submission