First-ever image of baby planet being formed gives astronomers "new window"
CBS/AP July 2, 2018, 10:47 AM
BERLIN -- Astronomers say they've captured the first confirmed image of a planet forming in the dust swirling around a young star. Scientists said Monday the planet appears as a bright spot in the snapshot taken using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.
Miriam Kepler of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany said hints of baby planets have been detected before, but astronomers weren't sure whether those observations might simply be features in the swirling dust.
"These disks around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of observations have detected hints of baby planets in them," Miriam Keppler said in a statement. "The problem is that, until now, most of these planet candidates could just have been features in the disk."
In a paper to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, scientists describe the planet, located about 1.86 billion miles from the star PDS 70, as a gas giant bigger than Jupiter. They say it has a cloudy atmosphere and a surface temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit).
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02 July 2018 News
This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's VLT is the first clear image of a baby planet around the dwarf
star PDS 70 (blacked out by the coronagraph mask to block the light from the young star). Image: ESO/A. Müller et al.
By Kerry Hebden
Although evidence of the existence of new-born planets hiding in the dusty discs of young stars has been presented many times, a confirmed image of such a scenario has been lacking. Now, using SPHERE, a planet-hunting instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have finally captured the very first image of a protostar circling the very young star PDS 70. Not only that, but the data suggests that the planet’s atmosphere is cloudy.
SPHERE or the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument is a powerful planet finder designed to take images directly of exoplanets – a method known as direct imaging. Its objective is to detect and study new giant exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, however it can also take images of dusty debris discs around stars where planets may be forming.
“These discs around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of observations have detected hints of baby planets in them,” explains Miriam Keppler, who lead the team behind the discovery of PDS 70’s still-forming planet. “The problem is that until now, most of these planet candidates could just have been features in the disc.”
SPHERE’s strength lies in the instruments ability to mask the light from the central host star, therefore helping to reveal the signs of planet formation. Capitalising on this technique, astronomers led by a group at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany have finally been able to capture a spectacular snapshot of a protoplanet carving a path through the gas and dust surrounding its host star.
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https://room.eu.com/news/baby-planet-in-dusty-disc-finally-caught-on-camera