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Four worlds 133 light-years away orbiting a young star. (Jason Wang/Northwestern University) ********************************************************* A new video shared on YouTube is one of the most amazing things we've ever seen in planetary science. The video shows four dots of light moving in partial concentric circles around a black disk at their center. What you're actually looking at is a planetary system. The four dots are exoplanets, with the black disk obscuring their star, 133.3 light-years away from Earth. The partial circles are their orbital motions, a time-lapse compiled from 12 years of observations. The star is HR8799, and in 2008 its...

GRAVITY works by synching the VLT's four unit telescopes to perform like a bigger, more powerful telescope. For the first time, the Very Large Telescope's GRAVITY instrument has observed a distant exoplanet using optical interferometry. Observations of the exoplanet's atmosphere revealed massive, swirling storm clouds of iron and silicates stretching across the entirety of the alien planet. Astronomers described GRAVITY's feat and shared details about the observed target, exoplanet HR8799e, in a paper published this week in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. GRAVITY works by synching the VLT's four unit telescopes to perform like a bigger, more powerful telescope. Astronomers...