GRAVITY+ finds the third PDS 70 candidate is dust, not a planet

PDS 70 is one of only two stars with more than one confirmed protoplanet. A third, closer point-like source had been reported with SPHERE and JWST, but those data could not tell a planet from a compact dust clump.

New VLTI/GRAVITY+ observations of the predicted position did not recover a point source. A fake planet injected at the candidate’s K-band contrast is recovered, so the non-detection is not a sensitivity issue. The long VLTI baselines resolve structure that looks point-like to single-dish imagers; a Jupiter-sized planet would remain unresolved, while a dust clump of order 0.2 au would not. That, together with the candidate’s reflected-starlight spectrum, points to dust rather than a third protoplanet.

I am a co-author of the paper and a member of the GRAVITY+ consortium.

Read Using VLTI/GRAVITY+ to determine the identity of a third planet candidate in the PDS 70 system in Astronomy & Astrophysics (accepted 13 June 2026).