[ad_1]
Astronomers attended the formation of a new planet – about 370 light-years away – and took a unique picture of the birthing process.
The detailed image was taken by one of the powerful telescopes on Earth and shows the extremely young planet taking shape in the middle of the disk of gas and dust around its young star.
The photo provided by the European Southern Observatory ESO extracted from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of the 39, a planet captured in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70.
ESO via AP
The surface temperature of the planet is about 1000 C, making it "This planet is so hot because it's very young," said Michael Meyer, an astronomer from the University of Michigan, at The LA Times. "It still converts the potential energy of contraction into heat on its surface, Jupiter has been doing it for billions of years, and radiates this energy by cooling over time."
WATCH : Astronomers find new evidence of ninth planet in our solar system
The star, named PDS 70, is believed to be about 5.4 million years old, which is very young in cosmological time (the Earth is 4.5 billion years old). Astronomers have said that the planet must be younger than the host star and lies about 1.86 billion miles from it.
Scientists said that clues of baby planets had already been detected, but astronomers were not sure about features in the swirling dust.
READ MORE:
New earth-like planet discovered, where a year lasts only 10 days
"This confirms our picture of the formation of the planet, namely that the planets, while accumulating materials from their environment, dig a hole in the disc". At the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany and the leader of the team, NBC News
"In discovering how the formation of the planet unfolds around other stars we also learn about the history of our own solar system
WATCH: European astronomers capture the image of a planet in formation
© 2018 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
[ad_2]
Source link
