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A team of astronomers, led by a group of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy, in Heidelberg, Germany, captured a dramatic glimpse of planetary formation around the young dwarf star PDS 70, according to a statement. European Southern Observatory .
Using the SPHERE instrument, installed in the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), one of the most powerful planetary search instruments of the moment, l & # 39; international team he made the first firm detection of a young planet, called PDS 70b opening a path through the material surrounding the young star (and from which the planets are formed).
The SPHERE instrument also allowed the team to measure the brightness of the planet in different wavelengths, which, in turn, helps infer the properties of its atmosphere, reports ESO.
Specialists suggest that it is a gaseous concert before with a mbad "a few times like Jupiter" and with a surface temperature of about 832 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes it hotter than usual. any planet in our solar system.
#ESOCastLight Need to know about the newborn planet captured with the ESO Very Large Telescope #BiteSizedAstronomy # 4K #UHD https: / /t.co/ioGZkPi5kU pic.twitter.com/ Qtqh3WZjBo
– ESO (@ESO) 2 July 2018
The planet stands out clearly from new observations, visible as a bright spot at the right of blackened center of the image. It is about 1 billion kilometers from the central star, which is equivalent to the distance between Uranus and the Sun. The badysis shows that the PDS 70b is a giant gas planet with a mbad a few times higher than that of Jupiter.
The surface of the planet has a temperature of about 1832 ° F, much hotter than any planet in our solar system.
The dark region in the center of the image is due to the use of a coronagraph, a mask that blocks the blinding light of the central star and allows astronomers to detect their planetary companions of the disc much weaker. Without this mask, the weak luminosity of the planet would be totally overcome by the intense brightness of the PDS 70.
"These discs around the young stars are the birthplaces of the planets, but until now, only a handful of observations have detected signs of baby planets in them, "says Miriam Keppler, who heads the team behind the discovery of the planet PDS 70, still in training." The problem is that, up to At present, most of these candidates to the planet could only be phenomena on the record. "
The discovery of the young companion of PDS 70 is an exciting scientific result that has already deserved further investigation. In the last few months, a second team, involving many astronomers from the discovery team, including Keppler, has continued to study the first observations to further investigate the new global partner of the PDS 70.
No only they got the spectacular image of the planet shown here, but they were even able to get a spectrum of the planet. Analysis of this spectrum indicates that its atmosphere is cloudy.
"The results of Keppler offer a new perspective on the early stages of global evolution, which are complex and do not fully understand," said André Müller, leader of the second team studying the young planet.
"We needed to observe a planet in the disc of a young star to really understand the processes of planetary formation." By determining the atmospheric and physical properties of the planet, astronomers are able to test theoretical models of planetary formation.
Thomas Henning, director of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy and Team Leader, summarizes the scientific adventure: "After more than a decade of Huge efforts to build this high-tech machine, now SPHERE allows us to pick up what was sown with the discovery of the small planets! ".
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