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                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2025 August 27
     A dark field has a series of light-colored elliptical rings in the
    center. Between two of the rings is a yellow-colored spot. Please see
               the explanation for more detailed information.

                WISPIT 2b: Exoplanet Carves Gap in Birth Disk
                       Image Credit: ESO, VLT, SPHERE;
   Processing & Copyright: ESO, Richelle van Capelleveen (Leiden Obs.) et
                                    al.;
                          Text: Ogetay Kayali (MTU)

   Explanation: That yellow spot -- what is it? It's a young planet
   outside our Solar System. The featured image from the Very Large
   Telescope in Chile surprisingly captures a distant scene much like our
   own Solar System's birth, some 4.5 billion years ago. Although we can't
   look into the past and see Earth's formation directly, telescopes let
   us watch similar processes unfolding around distant stars. At the
   center of this frame lies a young Sun-like star, hidden behind a
   coronagraph that blocks its bright glare. Surrounding the star is a
   bright, dusty protoplanetary disk -- the raw material of planets. Gaps
   and concentric rings mark where a newborn world is gathering gas and
   dust under its gravity, clearing the way as it orbits the star.
   Although astronomers have imaged disk-embedded planets before, this is
   the first-ever observation of an exoplanet actively carving a gap
   within a disk -- the earliest direct glimpse of planetary sculpting in
   action.

                      Tomorrow's picture: misty galaxy
     __________________________________________________________________

       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
                  NASA Web Privacy, Accessibility, Notices;
                      A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
                           NASA Science Activation
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

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