Overview
- Astronomers reported Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that VLTI’s upgraded GRAVITY+ instrument captured a K-band spectrum with a clear carbon monoxide signature, confirming the close-in companion WISPIT 2c as a planet.
- WISPIT 2c is a hot, young gas giant with an inferred mass of about 8–12 Jupiters at roughly 14 astronomical units from its star, making it about twice as massive and far closer in than the previously imaged planet WISPIT 2b at ~57 au.
- The team fit the planet’s spectrum to models, finding a temperature near 1,500–2,600 K and a radius of about 0.9–2.2 times Jupiter’s, which matches expectations for a forming giant still glowing from its birth heat.
- Astrometric checks ruled out a background object and showed tentative orbital motion for WISPIT 2c, with continued VLTI/VLT monitoring planned to lock down the orbit and refine the planet’s properties.
- The multi-ring disk hints at more worlds under construction, including a narrower outer gap that may point to a Saturn-mass embryo, and the system now joins PDS 70 as only the second case where multiple planets are seen forming, setting up prime targets for the coming Extremely Large Telescope.