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The first ever direct photograph of another multi-planet system orbiting a 

sun-like star(TYC 8998-760-1, also known as YSES-1) was captured by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2020. 

This groundbreaking image shows two giant exoplanets, YSES-1b and YSES-1c, appearing as bright dots in the frame after the star’s light was blocked by an instrument called a coronagraph. While thousands of exoplanets had been discovered previously through indirect methods, this marked the first time astronomers had directly imaged more than one planet orbiting a star similar to our own Sun. 

The star system is located about 300 light-years from Earth and is very young, only around 17 million years old, which is why its planets are still hot enough to glow brightly in infrared light and be observable with current technology. The discovery provides a valuable snapshot of an early-stage solar system. 

Key Details:

• Star: TYC 8998-760-1 (YSES-1) – a young, Sun-like star located about 300 light-years away.
• Planets: Two giant exoplanets, YSES-1b (inner, ~14x Jupiter’s mass) and YSES-1c (outer, ~6x Jupiter’s mass).
• Technology: The SPHERE instrument on ESO’s VLT, which uses a coronagraph to block the bright starlight, allowing the much fainter planets to be seen.
• Significance: It marked the first time astronomers directly observed more than one planet orbiting a star similar to our own Sun, offering a glimpse into another young solar system. 

This discovery is a snapshot of an environment that is very similar to our Solar System, but at a much earlier stage of its evolution,” says Alexander Bohn, a PhD student at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who led the new research published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

“Even though astronomers have indirectly detected thousands of planets in our galaxy, only a tiny fraction of these exoplanets have been directly imaged,” says co-author Matthew Kenworthy, Associate Professor at Leiden University, adding that “direct observations are important in the search for environments that can support life.” The direct imaging of two or more exoplanets around the same star is even more rare; only two such systems have been directly observed so far, both around stars markedly different from our Sun. The new ESO’s VLT image is the first direct image of more than one exoplanet around a Sun-like star. ESO’s VLT was also the first telescope to directly image an exoplanet, back in 2004, when it captured a speck of light around a brown dwarf, a type of ‘failed’ star.

“Our team has now been able to take the first image of two gas giant companions that are orbiting a young, solar analogue,” says Maddalena Reggiani, a postdoctoral researcher from KU Leuven, Belgium, who also participated in the study. The two planets can be seen in the new image as two bright points of light distant from their parent star, which is located in the upper left of the frame (click on the image to view the full frame). By taking different images at different times, the team were able to distinguish these planets from the background stars.

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