From this world, a planet is born

The dark region in the center of the image is due to a coronagraph, a mask that blocks the blinding light of the central star and allows astronomers to detect the dim light of the planet.

"For our study, we," said Miriam Keppler, a PhD student at MPIA, "These discs around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of people." observations have detected clues of baby planets in them.

"The problem is that, until now, most of these candidate-planets could simply have been features in the disc."

This Snapshot from the birth covered with dust from a planet was only possible because of the Sphere instrument of ESO, which studies the exoplanets and disks around nearby stars in using a technique known as high-contrast imaging

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to measure the brightness of the net pla at different wavelengths, and discover its composition It is located about 2.9 billion kilometers from the central star, which is roughly equivalent to the distance between Uranus and our sun. The planet takes about 120 years to orbit its host star.

The spectral badysis shows that the PDS 70b is a giant gas planet, with a mbad of a few times that of Jupiter and a surface temperature of about 1000 degrees Celsius. Thomas Henning, director of the Max Planck Institute and leader of the teams, summarizes the scientific adventure: "After more than a decade of tremendous effort to build this high-tech machine, now Sphere Astronomers have discovered to date about 3800 planets outside the solar system, but have never been born.

"The results give us a new window" We needed to observe a planet in the record of a young star to really understand the processes behind. "said Dr. Andre Muller, leader of the second team charged with investigating the young planet

. planet formation. "

The Telegraph, London