They photograph for the first time the birth of a planet

But it is already a problem of the past. "After more than a decade of tremendous effort to build this high-tech machine, SPHERE allows us to reap new fruit with the discovery of the planets," said Thomas Henning, director of the Institute. Max Planck of Astronomy, on the Southern European site. Observatory

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SPHERE is the acronym for "Spectropolarimetric high-contrast exoplanet search instrument", a device that blocks the central region of the stars to reduce the amount of light emanating and to be able to see in detail the objects that surround it.

"Have you ever tried to block sunlight with your thumb? If you did, then you may have noticed a ring of blinding light around your shaded finger," explains the European Southern Observatory.

It is SPHERE, the camera that allowed to photograph the birth of the planet PDS 70b.The antecedent of this device is the coronograph, invented by the French astronomer Bernard Lyot to study the atmosphere of the Sun, in 1931.

This is for this reason that we see a black dot in the center of the photograph.] There, scientists have blocked the light of the star in question, known as PDS 70, a dwarf star with less than ten million years.

Around, you can see the disc of gas and dust that surrounds it, and point yellow to the right of the black dot, which corresponds to the new planet which received the name of PDS 70b

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The researchers also found that the planet is as far from his star as Uranus from the Sun in our solar system, at 3,000 million kilometers.

In addition, a year in this planet corresponds to 118 terrestrial years. That is, it is the time it takes PDS 70b to go around PDS 70 .

The telescopes of the Southern European Observatory are located at Cerro Parbad, in the Atacama Desert, Chile, 120 kilometers from Antofagasta

It is believed that The outside temperature of this planet exceeds 1 [19659015]. 000 degrees centigrade much more than any other planet in our solar system. Are the planets born?

The most accepted theory is that planets are created from the material that remains when a star is formed. Consisting mainly of gas and dust, the new planet revolves around the star in a large disk.

Over time, fragments of these remains collide and, the bigger they become, the more gravity and debris they have. , including other planets being formed.

Scientists only have our own solar system as an example to build this theory. Therefore, being able to visualize planets such as PDS 70b in the early stages of its development will help astronomers better understand this process

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