Direct detection of a multi-planet system caught in formation

With thousands of extrasolar planets detected in the last decades, we find ourselves asking the question how to explain the huge diversity in planet properties and system architectures. To understand the key processes involved in planet formation we must turn to the initial conditions in the dust and gas rich disks around young stars. Near-infrared and sub-mm observations have revealed a wealth of sub-structures in disks; smoking guns pointing to the presence of embedded planets. Yet the detection of these nascent planets has proven difficult, and until now, only a single system has been identified where multi-wavelength observations could unambiguously confirm the presence of planets. One major difficulty for the direct imaging of these objects is that many of them are too faint to be detected even with the most advanced ground based facilities. The superior sensitivity of space-based observations with JWST now gives us the opportunity for a new observational window into the earliest phases of planet formation. In this program we propose to directly detect the planets in an exceptional disk around a young low-mass star. The disk shows a rare combination of spiral and ring structures in near-infrared scattered light, which strongly indicates the presence of an embedded planet in the inner disk region (30 au). Furthermore complementary ALMA high resolution observations of the disk's gas point to a second planet in the outer disk (116 au). We show that based on existing data and dedicated simulations, both planets can be detected simultaneously with JWST/NIRCam at 4.4 micron. This presents us with the unique opportunity to directly study a multi-planet system in formation....