A system with two planets seen drawing a path around a young star

As the system is so young, it is only 6 million years old, the central star is still surrounded by a disk of gas and dust, like most young stars. But the planets have filled an important hole in this disc, which extends from about 1.9 billion to 3.8 billion kilometers, and encircle the star in this hole.

This type of gap in the dust clouds surrounding young stars has already been observed, and exoplanets are often referred to as the source of these gaps. When planets gravitate around their planet, their gravity sucks materials nearby and eventually sucks up all the dust and gases nearby, creating an empty space. Finally, a planet will lack material and stop growing. This is also how researchers think that the planets of our own solar system have formed. But in many systems, only the holes are visible, not the planets themselves.

PDS 70 is the direct confirmation of planets and gaps in the same system, giving considerable weight to the astronomers' theories of planet formation. In addition, the two planets revolve around a resonance, the inner planet surrounding its star twice as often as the outer planet. Such resonances can cause planets to migrate over time, and researchers suspect that this type of resonance between Jupiter and Saturn has shaped much of the history of the solar system.