Stunning Time-Lapse Reveals Distant Planet's Epic Orbit

Astrophysicist Jason Wang from Northwestern University has created a time-lapse video capturing 17 years of telescope images of the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b orbiting its host star. The video, which compresses the images into 10 seconds, provides a rare glimpse of the planet's decades-long journey around the star. While the video only captures 75% of the planet's orbit, it is believed to be the longest time-lapse of an exoplanet ever made. The planet, located about 63 light-years away from Earth, is 12 times the mass of Jupiter and is considered to be at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf.