Overview
- The confirmation, published Sept. 16, 2026, identifies Elias 2-24 b as a world less than one million years old orbiting a star about 450 light-years away in the ρ Ophiuchi region.
- Elias 2-24 b is roughly Jupiter-mass and sits inside a clear gap in its host star’s protoplanetary disk at a distance about 55 astronomical units, consistent with a forming planet clearing material as it orbits.
- Researchers combined archival Keck coronagraph images from 2018 and 2020 with earlier ALMA and VLT data to track the source’s motion over time and rule out imaging artifacts or background stars.
- The planet’s early appearance far from its star conflicts with standard core-accretion models that predict roughly 5 million years to build a Jupiter-size planet at similar separations, implying faster growth or missing physics in simulations.
- Scientists say the result highlights the value of multi-telescope archival work and that new instruments, especially NASA’s Roman coronagraph, should make it easier to find more embedded baby planets and refine theories of how they form.