Astronomers have seen a moon form around a proto-jupiter

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Exomoon extaterretrial life image 6103 Exomoon 1
Artist's impression of an exomoon orbiting a giant planet. Sci-News.com

Astronomers spotted a young planet surrounded by a disk of gas and dust similar to the one that gave birth to Jupiter's moons. The planet PDS 70b is a gas giant several times the size of Jupiter that is forming and is about 370 light-years distant orbiting the dwarf star PDS 70.

"Planets form from gas and dust disks around emerging stars. If a planet is big enough, it can form its own disc as it gathers material around the star, "says astronomer Andrea Isella, lead author of the article, said in a statement . "Jupiter and its moons are a small planetary system in our solar system, for example, and it is thought that the moons of Jupiter were formed from a circumplanetary disk while Jupiter was very young."

But these circumplanetary disks do not last long. They are supposed to disappear after 10 million years, which means that there is no such disk in our solar system for 4 billion years. To study records, astronomers had to hunt far farther, in search of young stars surrounded by planets. Only a few planets have been found in the discs.

The discovery was made using the extensive Atacama Telescope Micrometers Network (ALMA) in Chile, consisting of a wide range of 66 radio telescopes working together to detect electromagnetic radiation in wavelengths. millimetric and submillimetric.

circumplanetary moon forming disc discovered around the distant planet 777x518 1
A color image of millimeter-wave radio signals from the ALMA observatory in Chile shows a disk of gas and dust (to the right of the center) around the exoplanet PDS 70c, the very first observation of the disc type The planetary circumference that we believe gave birth to the moons of Jupiter more than 4 billion years ago. A. Isella, ALMA (ESO / NAOJ / NRAO)

The data collected by ALMA corroborated the previous discoveries with the Multi-unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) and the very large telescope, which allowed to observe the wavelengths of visible light emitted when hydrogen ionizes when he falls on a star or a planet. Between these two sources of data, Isella is convinced that the planet PDS 70b is there.

By observing planets with circumplanetary disks, we could learn about the formation of planets and moons: "There are many things we do not understand about planet formation," Isella said. "And we finally have the instruments to make direct observations and start answering questions about the formation of our solar system and about the possible formation of other planets."

The results are published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.






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