Looking for life in the cosmos is like searching for a needle in an eternal haystack, but sometimes luck pays off. The recent discovery of two planets in orbit around a young star is a rare find in the vastness of space.
Experts were in awe after capturing an image of another solar system that that is like our own sun. Seen in the image are two planets in orbit just like in our cosmic neighborhood.
Orbiting around the baby sun are two gas giants that are just like Jupiter and Saturn, and they are as close as 300 light-years away from us. At that distance, there are farther cosmic objects that have been detected too, according to AP News.
The amazing snapshot of another solar system was released last Wednesday by the European Southern Observatory's VLT that is found in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Detecting visuals with telescopes adds to the current information about these galactic objects.
Alexander Bohn of Leiden University in the Netherlands, said that the shot is an example of how our sun looked at that age. He confirmed that the solar system is not younger, according to CGTN. He added that is the first documentation by scientists of such images in outer space.
Learning about these star systems can give scientists insights on how solar systems develop over time, including ours.
Also read: SETI Looks for Alien Life on Comets from Deep Space
One of the methods that are used to detect worlds around stars is to examine the dimming of starlight, which is a sign of a planet in orbit. Many keen observations have helped detect planets in our Milky Way Galaxy. Exoplanets farther out have been detected and mapped by astronomers which already gives us an idea of what is out there, as mentioned in ABC News.
Sighting an exoplanet using only a telescope poses a lot of challenges. With the telescopic sighting of the exoplanet, seeing two of them orbiting the same star is one in a million discovery. To date, only the solar systems that are more than two is most likely to be spotted. Scientists have only been able to spot two multi-planet solar systems directly. They are usually not similar to the sun too.
Of all the 4,138 exoplanets discovered, only 48 has been captured in photos and that's 1% only, according to Washington Post. Bohn added that directly imaging celestial structures is the only way to determine if there is life other than us in the vast universe.
Light is the key to analyze its spectroscopy to see elements at great distances. This is the first step to detect water, if there is any, in an exoplanet, CBC. The study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters shows an image of a system with similarities to our own. He added it is a younger version of ours which invaluable for study.
This star is called TYC 8998-760-1 located in the Musca constellation that is less than 17 million years old. Its planets take a thousand years to finish one orbit, and they are far more massive than our planets.
Related article: White Dwarfs Might Be the Place to Find Alien Life
