A strange pair of giant planets orbiting a young sun-like star.

This week on Planetary Radio.

I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.

Back in 2020, astronomers used the very

large telescope in Chile to capture an image of not one, but two giant exoplanets orbiting a young

sun-like star. The system was called Wysus 1. It was the first time that we'd ever directly imaged

a multi-planet system going around a star that was much like our own.

Now, thanks to new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, we're getting a far deeper understanding of these worlds.

One of them is still surrounded by a dusty circumplanetary disk, and the other has silicate clouds in its upper atmosphere.

To tell us more about these worlds,

I'm joined by two members of the research team behind these discoveries,

Keelan Hoke and Emily Rickman from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

We'll explore what this young planetary system can teach us about how planets form

and what separates gas giants from brown dwarfs.

Once more, JWST is redefining what we thought we knew about planetary evolution.

Then we'll be joined by Bruce Bats, our chief scientist for What's Up.

We'll talk a bit about why it was possible to directly image these worlds in the first place,

and what it would take to directly image older, colder worlds with missions like the upcoming

habitable worlds observatory. If you love planetary radio and want to stay informed about the latest

space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform.

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