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For the first time, astronomers have been able to directly follow the motion of an exoplanet as it moves from one side of its host star to the other. The planet has the smallest orbit so far of all directly imaged exoplanets, lying almost as close to its parent star as Saturn is to the Sun. Scientists believe that it may have formed in a similar way to the giant planets in the solar system. Because the star is so young, this discovery proves that gas giant planets can form within disks in only a few million years, a short time in cosmic terms.
Only 12 million years old, or less than three-thousandths of the age of the Sun, Beta Pictoris is 75 percent more massive than our parent star. It is located about 60 light-years away toward the constellation Pictor the Painter, and it is one of the best-known examples of a star surrounded by a dusty debris disk. Earlier observations showed a warp of the disk, a secondary inclined disk, and comets falling onto the star. "Those were indirect, but telltale signs that strongly suggested the presence of a massive planet, and our new observations now definitively prove this," said Anne-Marie Lagrange from Laboratoire d'AstrOphysique de Grenoble (LAOG), France. "Because the star is so young, our results prove that giant planets can form in disks in time spans as short as a few million years."
