Lifeboat Foundation

Astronomers have discovered a rare in-sync solar system with six planets moving like a grand cosmic orchestra, untouched by outside forces since their birth billions of years ago.

The find, announced Wednesday, can help explain how solar systems across the Milky Way galaxy came to be. This one is 100 light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. A pair of planet-hunting satellites — NASA’s Tess and the European Space Agency’s Cheops — teamed up for the observations that discovered the solar system.

Derrick Pitts, the chief astronomer at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, told CBS News that the planets are a rare example of how researchers “think solar systems are born.”