Elias 2-24 b: Discovery of the Youngest Known Exoplanet

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Key takeaways

Astronomers have confirmed Elias 2-24 b as the youngest known exoplanet, with an age estimated at less than 1 million years old.
Located 450 light-years from Earth in the Ophiuchus region, it orbits its host star at an extreme distance of 55 Astronomical Units (AU).
The planet has a mass similar to Jupiter and is actively gathering gas and dust within a dark gap in its circumstellar disk.
This discovery breaks the age record set by planets near PDS 70 and WISPIT 2, which are over 5 million years old.

Astronomers used archival data from the W. M. Keck Observatory funded by NASA to confirm Elias 2-24 b as the youngest known planet ever detected, aged less than 1 million years old.

It is a newly forming gas-giant exoplanet with a mass close to Jupiter, caught in the earliest stages of planetary birth while still embedded inside a disk of gas, dust, and rock.

This exoplanet formed around the young star Elias 2-24, located approximately 450 light-years from Earth within the Ophiuchus star-forming region.

The planet has an estimated age of less than 1 million years old, easily breaking the previous age record held by planets around PDS 70 and WISPIT 2, which are over 5 million years old.
It orbits its parent star at an extreme distance of 55 Astronomical Units (AU), which equals roughly 55 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
The planet sits directly inside a dark ringed gap in its surrounding disk, actively accumulating gas and dust to build its outer atmosphere.
Researchers identified the planet using high-contrast coronagraphy to block starlight, revealing infrared signatures in archival images taken between 2018 and 2020.

The rapid formation of a planet at 55 AU in under 1 million years challenges current planet formation models, suggesting faster mechanisms like gravitational instability or pebble drift.
This discovery offers scientists a direct window into how gas giants grow, migrate, and clear out space during the early evolution of solar systems.