An international team of astronomers, co-led by researchers at University of Galway, has made the unexpected discovery of a new planet.

Detected at an early stage of formation around a young analog of our own Sun, the planet is estimated to be about 5 million years-old and most likely a gas giant of similar size to Jupiter.

The study, which was led by Leiden University, University of Galway and University of Arizona, has been published in the international journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The ground-breaking discovery was made using one of the world’s most advanced observatories — the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

To coincide with the research being published, the Observatory has released a stunning image of the discovery as their picture of the week.

The new planet has been named WISPIT 2b.

Dr Christian Ginski, lecturer at the School of Natural Sciences, University of Galway and second author of the study, said: “We used these really short snapshot observations of many young stars — only a few minutes per object — to determine if we could see a little dot of light next to them that is caused by a planet.

“However, in the case of this star, we instead detected a completely unexpected and exceptionally beautiful multi-ringed dust disk.

“When we saw this multi-ringed disk for the first time, we knew we had to try and see if we could detect a planet within it, so we quickly asked for follow-up observations.”

It is only the second time a confirmed planet has been detected at this early evolutionary stage around a young version of our Sun. The first one was discovered in 2018, by a research team also involving Dr Ginski.

Pictured: New planet: image shows the discovery to the right of the centre ring.