First picture of a planet in formation



[ad_1]

Suspecting that in the PDS 70 star there might be a planet in formation, astronomers from the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy in Heidelberg Germany started to study it and what a surprise: they found it.

It is a planet with several times the mbad of Jupiter (the largest in our solar system) which is about 3,300 million kilometers from its star, 22 times farther than Earth is from the Sun.

Its size is 1.4 to 3.4 times that of Jupiter

The planet PDS b is still in training. That's why it's an event for astronomers, because the planets have not been seen so clearly in this phase, which will help better understand how they were born.

The mother star is only 5.4 million years old about 4,500 million years ago) and is surrounded by a disc of gas and matter that s & # 39; 39, extends up to 130 astronomical units. One unit is the distance between the Sun and the Earth, 150 million kilometers.

Compared to the edge of our solar system, the Kuiper belt extends to about 50 astronomical units.

The disc contains material left behind the formation of the star. PDS 70 is 370 light-years away from us and is part of a group of young stars, the Scorpion-Centaur Association, many of whom are still in training. It is the group of its type closest to the Earth.

The discovery was made with the Sphere instrument of the Very Large Telescope of the Southern European Observatory (ESO) in the Chilean Andes. Participated in the consortium that manages it

On the disc a gap or gap was observed, which corresponds to an object that is formed at this location, the aforementioned planet.

Due to the training process in which it takes matter of the disc, PDS 70b is a very hot planet, with a temperature between 750 and 1350 ° Celsius

The finding was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics .

[ad_2]
Source link