Exoplanets dance around distant star in stunning 12-year timelapse (video) - Space.com

Four Jupiter-mass exoplanets dance around their parent star in a stunning new timelapse collected over a dozen years.

The aim of the newly released video is to make the long orbits of these massive exoplanets more recognizable to a wide audience, Northwestern University astrophysicist Jason Wang said in a statement(opens in new tab).

(Image credit: Jason Wang/Northwestern University)HR8799 is 1.5 times more massive than our sun and lies roughly 133 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus.

Keck has great advantages for astronomy: adaptive optics to compensate for the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere, and a coronagraph that blocks the light from the parent star, allowing the reflected-light "fireflies" (planets) to shine through.

The newly released timelapse is an updated version, with 12 years of observations from when Wang's team had access to the telescope.

Elizabeth's reporting includes an exclusive with Office of the Vice-President of the United States, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission.