They capture the birth of a planet for the first time

This is a gaseous giant formed by the collapse of a dust disk around its dwarf star PDS 70.

The search for exoplanets has become a priority for the Scientific community and the detection of a life form or a planet that can hold it, was considered the big challenge of the 21st century.

In this research, humanity has witnessed, for the first time in its history, an amazing astronomical phenomenon: the birth of a planet. This is the first image obtained from a newborn planet around its star, captured by the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy, in Heidelberg (Germany).

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It is several times larger than Jupiter, its temperature is almost two thousand degrees and it is as far from its star as Uranus of the Sun.

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The planet stands out very clearly in the observations, and is visible as a bright spot to the right of the blackened center of the image. This newborn carved what is called a transition disc: protoplanetary dust ring with a giant "hole" in the center. These internal gaps have been known for decades and it has been speculated that they are produced by disk-planet interaction. Indeed, it was like this: now we can observe the new planet.

Why is this detection useful?

In addition to the excitation of the fact itself, in determining the atmospheric and physical properties of the planet, astronomers can test theoretical models of planetary formation and understand how the gaseous planets of our solar system are are trained, as well as integrating the way others do it.

The details of the detection were published in two scientific articles of the prestigious magazine Astronomy & Astrophysics

Source: Muy Interesante

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