Astronomers make their first observations of a disc 'forming the moon'. around a distant planet

Artist's view of a circumplanetary disk around the PDS 70c, a giant gas exoplanet in a star system at 370 light-years.

The illustration of the artist shows two gas giant exoplanets orbiting the young star PDS 70. These planets are still growing by collecting materials from a surrounding disk. In doing so, they have graviellement created a large space in the disc.

This is an illustration of the NGTS-4b artist, also known to astronomers as "The Forbidden Planet". It revolves around its star every 1.3 days and still maintains a gaseous atmosphere in the Neptunian Desert, where no planet the size of Neptune has been found.

Artistic illustration of HD 21749c, the first Earth-sized planet discovered by TESS, as well as its brother, the HD 21749b, a warm Neptune mini.

A "warm Saturn" passes in front of its host star in this illustration. Astronomers studying stars have used "stellar earthquakes" to characterize the star, which provided vital information about the planet.

TESS artist concept on background of stars and planets orbiting the Milky Way. Credit: ESA, Mr. Kornmesser (ESO), Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET Systems Inc.), Britt Griswold (Maslow Media Group), NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center and Cornell University

A super-telescope allowed the first direct observation of an exoplanet using optical interferometry. This method revealed a complex exoplanetary atmosphere with clouds of iron and silicates swirling in a global storm. This technique offers unique possibilities to characterize many exoplanets known to date.

This image shows an artist impression of the surface of Barnard's star b, a super-cold-Earth discovery orbiting Barnard's star at 6 light-years away.

The artist's illustration shows a newly discovered exoplanet, K2-288Bb, 226 light years from Earth and two times smaller than Neptune. It orbits the weakest member of a pair of M-type stars every 31.3 days.

Here is an artist image of the exoplanet HAT-P-11b. The planet has an extended atmosphere of helium that is swept by the star, an orange dwarf star smaller but more active than our sun.

The artwork by an artist of what could look like the super-Earth around the star HD 26965 (also known as 40 Eridani A). The newly discovered exoplanet is compared to the fictional Vulcan planet because Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, said the star was the perfect candidate to host Vulcan, Mr. Spock's home world.

The TRAPPIST-1 star, an ultra-cool dwarf, is orbited by seven planets the size of the Earth.

For the first time, eight planets were found in orbit around another star, connected to our solar system for the most famous planets surrounding a single star. The Kepler-90 system is in the Draco constellation, more than 2,500 light-years away from Earth.

This artist's illustration shows the exoplanet Ross 128b, with its red dwarf host star in the background. The planet is only 11 light years from our solar system. It is now the second closest temperate planet to be detected, after Proxima b.

WASP-121b, located 880 light-years away, is considered a very hot planet, similar to Jupiter. It has a mass and radius greater than those of Jupiter, which makes it more "puffy". If the WASP-121b was closer to its host star, it would be torn by the gravity of the star.

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope team has identified 219 other candidates, including 10 of the Earth's size and located in the habitable zone of their stars.

Welcome to the KELT-9 system. The host star is a fast-spinning type A star that is about 2.5 times more massive and almost twice as hot as our sun. The hot star blows on its near planet KELT-9b with massive amounts of radiation, leading to a day temperature of 7800 degrees Fahrenheit, warmer than most stars and only 2000 degrees cooler than the sun.

The concept of this artist shows OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, a planet orbiting an extremely weak star lying 13,000 light-years away from us. It is a planet "ice ball" with temperatures reaching minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

LHS 1140b is located in the habitable zone of liquid water surrounding its host star, a small red star named LHS 1140. The planet weighs about 6.6 times the mass of the Earth and is represented passing by LHS 1140. It is represented in blue atmosphere that the planet could keep.

A conceptual image of artist from the surface of the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f. Of the seven exoplanets discovered in orbiting TRAPPIST-1, the ultra-cool dwarf star, this one is perhaps the most appropriate. Its size is similar to that of the Earth, it is a little colder than the temperature of the Earth and is in the habitable zone of the star, which means that liquid water (and even oceans) could be on the surface. The proximity of the star gives the sky a salmon hue, and the other planets are so close that they appear in the sky, much like our own moon.

Design of the binary system artist with three giant planets discovered, where one star hosts two planets and the other hosts the third. The system represents the smallest separation bin in which the two stars host planets never observed.

This artist shows the planet Proxima orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system.

This impression of artist shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b.

An artist's rendition shows exoplanets the size of the Earth, TRAPPIST-1b and 1c, during a rare double transit as they passed past their red dwarf star ultracool, which has allowed Hubble to take a look at their atmosphere.

On a new discovery of 104 exoplanets, astronomers discovered four stars of similar size to the Earth orbiting a dwarf star. Two of them have the potential to support life. The gear depicted in this illustration is NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which has confirmed the existence of thousands of exoplanets.

This impression of the artist shows a view of the three-star system HD 131399 seen from near the giant planet orbiting the system. Located about 320 light-years from Earth, the planet is about 16 million years old, making it also one of the youngest exoplanets discovered so far.

An artistic impression of the planet Kepler-1647b, which is almost identical to Jupiter in size and mass. The planet should be roughly similar in appearance. But it is much hotter: Kepler-1647b is in the habitable zone.

HD-106906b is a gas planet 11 times more massive than Jupiter. It is thought that the planet was formed in the center of its solar system, before being projected on the edges of the region by a violent gravitational event.

Kepler-10b orbits at a distance more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our own sun. Daytime temperatures exceed 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,500 degrees Fahrenheit), which is warmer than lava on Earth.

This Jupiter planet in the HD-188753 system, 149 light-years from Earth, has three suns. The main star is similar in mass to our own Sun. The system was compared to Tatooine, the original planet of Luke Skywalker, in "Star Wars".

Kepler-421b is an exoplanet in transition from the size of Uranus, with the longest known year as it surrounds its star once every 704 days. The planet orbits around a K-type orange star colder and darker than our Sun and located about 1000 light-years from Earth in the Lyra constellation.

Astronomers have discovered two planets less than three times the size of the Earth orbiting sun-like stars, in a clutter cluster cluttered about 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

The design of this artist shows a hypothetical planet with two moons in orbit in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. The majority of stellar neighbors closest to the sun are red dwarfs.

Kepler-186f was the first validated planet of Earth's size to have been orbited around a distant star in the habitable zone. This area is located at a distance from a star where liquid water could accumulate on the surface of the planet.

Kepler-69c is a planet the size of a super-Earth similar to Venus. The planet is in the habitable zone of a star like our sun, about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

The Kepler-444 system was formed while the Milky Way was only 2 billion years old. The very compact system houses five planets of different sizes, the smallest is comparable to the size of Mercury and the largest in Venus, gravitating around their sun in less than 10 days.

This artistic concept image compares Earth, left, to Kepler-452b, which is about 60% larger. The two planets revolve around a G2 star of the same temperature; However, the star hosting Kepler-452b is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun.