Four gas giants orbiting the star HR 8799. Image credit: Jason Wang / Christian Marois.

Watch: Four gas giants in orbit around another star for the first time

And if you’re amazed by this, just imagine what the next generation of space-and-ground-based telescopes will see!

“The Beta Pic animation looked so cool that we’ve wanted to do more. We wanted to make one that was even more impactful for the audience and could begin to show what one of these systems looks like.” -Jason Wang

The era of directly imaging planets beyond our Solar System has officially arrived. We don’t just see stars that generate their own light, but actual planets, reflecting the light from their stars.

A composite image of the first exoplanet ever directly imaged (red) and its brown dwarf parent star, as seen in the infrared. Image credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO).

The first world directly imaged was 2M1207b in 2004, where infrared observations revealed a planet larger and more massive than Jupiter, orbiting a brown dwarf.

An exoplanet detected around the star Fomalhaut, seen to move in multiple images over time. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas, University of California, Berkeley and SETI Institute.

Four years later, three other stars joined the ranks: Fomalhaut, HR 8799 and Beta Pictoris.