Archival NASA-funded data confirm youngest known planet at under a million years old
Elias 2-24 b sits in a disk gap 55 times Earth's distance from its star, where formation models ask for at least five million years to build a Jupiter. Keck coronagraph images from 2018 and 2020 put it under a million years old.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- A team led by Andrea Bernardi of the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile published the result on Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
- The planet, Elias 2-24 b, is less than a million years old, the youngest known, and is still embedded in the disk of dust and gas its star was born in.
- Current models predict about 5 million years to form a Jupiter-size planet at Jupiter's distance from the Sun, and even longer at wider separations.
Why it matters
- What it limits constraint If the sub-million-year age survives scrutiny, the formation clock in these models has to run at least five times faster at a radius where the same models ask for more time.
- What's now possible capability Coronagraph archives already on disk reach the newborn end of the planet population that transit surveys structurally cannot. Adding cases needs no new hardware.
- What it sets up precedent The cheapest next candidates are disks where ALMA has already mapped a gap and another telescope has seen a dot in it, and this result shows two archival epochs can settle such an argument.
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A gap in a dust disk only hints at a planet. ALMA mapped the gap around Elias 2-24 about a decade ago, and the Very Large Telescope later found a faint point of light sitting inside it [9]. Astronomers then argued about what the dot was, because formation theory said such gaps appear too early and too far from their stars for a planet to have carved them [10]. "The planets should be found within the gaps, since they are carving them," Bernardi said [5].
The Keck Observatory Archive, a NASA-funded partnership between the observatory and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech/IPAC, held the same point of light in coronagraph images from 2018 and 2020, and the team stitched those together to follow its motion over time [12]. The search covered archival coronagraph data on seven stars, each hosting a disk whose structures and gaps hint at planets forming [3]. Two other telescopes had already flagged this candidate.
Separation is what pushes on the models. The dot sits 55 times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun [11]. Jupiter orbits at just over five times the Earth-Sun distance, which puts Elias 2-24 b roughly ten times farther out than Jupiter [15]. Models put about 5 million years on assembling a Jupiter-size planet at Jupiter's distance, and longer than that farther out [14]. An object of about Jupiter's mass and under a million years old, at ten times that radius, has to come together at least five times faster than the models allow at the easier distance [16].
The planets it displaces were already awkward. Lucas Cieza, a co-author and professor at the Instituto de Estudios Astrofisicos in Chile, said the previous record was a four-way tie between two planets at PDS 70 and two at WISPIT 2, all more than 5 million years old, and that the models already struggled with those [17]. "Elias 2-24 b shows us that even our best planet-formation models are still missing some important processes," he said [4].
By construction, the comparison sample is thin. Transits, which found most known exoplanets, work poorly on a planet buried in dust or orbiting far from its star, so the overwhelming majority of the 6,000 confirmed exoplanets are billions of years old and close in [6]. Otherwise the models lean on theory, simulation, and observations of young disks where no planet has been detected at all [7]. "We are mostly blind to these baby planets right now," Cieza said [8].
The record rests on the age, and NASA did not say how the age was derived [13]. A revision of that number would leave the detection in the gap untouched, and would move Elias 2-24 b back toward the PDS 70 and WISPIT 2 group without changing what the coronagraph saw. The star is about 450 light-years from Earth [18].
What to watch
- A third Keck or VLT epoch testing whether the point source tracks orbital motion inside the gap.
- Whether the other six disks in the archival search turn up companions in their own gaps.
- An independent age estimate for the Elias 2-24 system; the sub-million-year figure is what makes this a record.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence68
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives40
- Confidence66
Perspective Coverage
5 publishers- Builder
- Builder 55%
- Operator
- Operator 31%
- Investor
- Investor 14%
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
Astronomers have confirmed a world less than a million years old as the youngest known planet, using data from NASA-funded archives. The planet, called Elias 2-24 b, is still whirling in its natal disk of dust and gas.
- [2]
The results were published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by a team led by Andrea Bernardi, a doctoral candidate at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile.
- [3]
The team homed in on archival observations of seven stars observed with the coronagraph at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, which partners with NASA under a cooperative agreement. Each of those stars hosts a debris disk full of dust, gas and chunks of ice and rock, with structures and gaps hinting that planets may be forming.
- [4]
Lucas Cieza, a professor at the Instituto de Estudios Astrofisicos in Chile and a co-author of the paper, said: "Elias 2-24 b shows us that even our best planet-formation models are still missing some important processes."
- [5]
Bernardi said: "The planets should be found within the gaps, since they are carving them."
- [6]
Most exoplanets discovered so far were found using transits, which are hard to spot when planets are still deeply buried in dust or orbiting far from the star; an overwhelming majority of the 6,000 currently confirmed exoplanets are billions of years old and very close to their stars.
- [7]
Current planet-formation models rely on a combination of complex theories and simulations along with observations of young stars with disks where the presence of planets cannot yet be detected.
- [8]
Cieza said: "We are mostly blind to these baby planets right now."
- [9]
About a decade ago, observations from ALMA in Chile showed a gap in the young star's dusty disk, and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope then detected a faint point of light sitting in that gap.
- [10]
Astronomers debated whether the point of light could be a planet, because according to planet-formation theories such gaps appear too early and too far from their stars for planets to have formed.
- [11]
The glowing dot spotted in the disk gap was 55 times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun, and already behaving like a forming planet.
- [12]
Bernardi's team searched the Keck Observatory Archive, a NASA-funded partnership between Keck Observatory and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech/IPAC, for the same point of light, found it in observations from 2018 and 2020, and stitched the observations together to analyse its motion over time.
- [13]
The NASA account of the results does not describe how the team determined the age of the system.
- [14]
Current models predict that it takes about 5 million years to form a Jupiter-size planet at Jupiter's distance from the Sun, which is just over five times the distance from Earth to the Sun, and even longer farther out.
- [15]
At 55 times the Earth-Sun distance, Elias 2-24 b orbits roughly ten times farther from its star than Jupiter does from the Sun.
- [16]
A planet of roughly Jupiter's mass that is under a million years old must assemble at least five times faster than the roughly 5 million years models allow for a Jupiter-size planet at Jupiter's distance, and the model timescale is longer still at wider separations.
- [17]
Cieza said planet-formation models already struggled to explain the previous record holders for the youngest known planet, a four-way tie between two planets orbiting the star PDS 70 and two planets orbiting the star WISPIT 2, all of which are more than 5 million years old.
- [18]
The planet orbiting the star Elias 2-24 is about as massive as Jupiter, and the star is about 450 light-years from Earth.
Sources
4 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- livescience.comThis million-year-old 'baby planet' is the youngest world scientists have ever discovered
1 article · September 17, 2026
- nasa.govNewfound ‘Baby’ Planet Smashes Record for Youngest Known World
1 article · September 16, 2026
- phys.orgNewfound 'baby' planet smashes record for youngest known world
1 article · September 16, 2026
- sciencedaily.comAstronomers just found the youngest known planet ever
1 article · September 17, 2026
- wired.comAstronomers Confirm Discovery of the Youngest Known Exoplanet Ever
1 article · October 5, 2026
Topics and entities
Entities
- European Southern Observatory
- W. M. Keck Observatory
- Universidad Diego Portales
- Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
- Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array
- NASA Exoplanet Science Institute
- Keck Observatory Archive
- The Astrophysical Journal Letters
- NASA
- Very Large Telescope