Here is a newborn planet: Eso images

The Sphere tool also measured the brightness of the planet at different wavelengths, in order to derive certain properties of the atmosphere . The planet is clearly distinguishable in new observations, visible as a bright spot to the right of the obscured center of the image. It is about three billion kilometers from the central star, about the distance between Uranus and the Sun. The badysis shows that Pds 70b is a giant gaseous planet of a mbad equal to a few times that of Jupiter. The surface of the planet reaches temperatures of 1000 ° C, which makes it much hotter than any planet in the solar system.

The dark region in the center of the image is due to a coronagraph, a mask that blocks the blinding light. central star and thus allows astronomers to detect the disc, much weaker, and planetary companions. Without this mask, the dim light of the planet would be completely drowned in the intense light of the Pds 70.

"The discs around the young stars are the birthplaces of the planets, but until now, only a handful from observations could find traces of " Miriam Keppler at the head of the team that discovered the planet in formation in Pds 70.

The problem is that until 39 at present, most of the candidate planets could only be structures. "The discovery of Pds 70's young partner is an exciting scientific result that has already motivated new ideas. A second group, which includes many of the group's astronomers made the discovery, including Keppler, continued the initial observations of the young planetary mate of Pds 70 in more detail. They produced the spectacular image shown here, but they also managed to get the specter of a planet. The spectrum badysis indicates the presence of clouds in the atmosphere of Pds 70b. The planetary companion of Pds 70 sculpted a transitional disk – a protoplanetary disk with a gigantic & quot; hole & quot; In the center. The internal gaps have been known for decades and it is thought that they are produced by disk-planet interaction. Now we can see the planet for the first time.

"The results of Keppler have given us a new window on the early, complex and still uncertain phases of global evolution", comments André Müller at the head of the second group that studied the young planet. We had to observe a planet on the record of a young star to clearly understand the process leading to planetary formation. "

Tomas Henning director of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy and head of these research groups, summarizes Thus, the scientific adventure:" After more than 15 years, a decade of huge records to build this machine with advanced technology, now Sphere allows us to reap good results with the discovery of newborn planets! "

" A year ago the first planet discovered with the Sphere instrument around a star that had already had time to disperse the disc from which it was formed – points out Raffele Gratton of the Astronomical Observatory of INAF Padua , who participated in the discovery -. This new result is another important step in understanding the mechanisms of planetary formation, having seized the planet at the very beginning of its existence. This is also the price of work done for over a decade by the entire consortium to which Inaf has made a fundamental contribution. "