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For the first time in the history of science, researchers have managed to capture images of a planet being formed around a young dwarf star
Camera that has captured the birth of the planet
The SPHERE instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), one of the most powerful planetary search instruments, was directed by astronomers led by a team of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy in Germany.
The SPHERE instrument also allowed the team to measure the brightness of the planet at different wavelengths, which allowed to deduce the properties of its atmosphere
The Planet stands out very clearly from the new visible observations in bright spot to the right of the blackened center of the image.
Location of the new planet PDS 70b
It is located about three billion kilometers from the central star, which is roughly equivalent to the distance between Uranus and Sun. The analysis shows that PDS 70b is a giant gas planet with a mass a few times that of Jupiter.
The surface of the planet has a temperature of about 1000 degrees Celsius, which makes it much hotter than any planet in our own solar system. 19659002] The first image of a planet in formation
A nascent planet seen digging a path through the disk of gas and dust surrounding the very young star PDS70 (Photo: ESO / A Müller et al )
The center of the image is due to a coronograph, a mask that blocks the blinding light of the central star and allows astronomers to detect its much weaker disk and planetary companion
Without this mask, the dim light of the planet would be totally overwhelmed by the intense brightness of the PDS 70.
"These discs around the young stars are the birthplaces of the planets, but until here only a Handful of observations have detected clues of baby planets, "said Miriam Keppler, who led the team. behind the discovery of the planet still in formation of PDS 70.
"The problem is that so far, most of these candidate planets might have been features in the disc," said Keppler
PDS 70 Planetary Companions
The young companion of the PDS 70 is an exciting scientific result that deserves to be deepened.
A second team, composed of many astronomers from the discovery team, including Keppler, has followed in recent months the first observations to investigate the PDS The Planetary Companion of the 70s in more detail.
They not only made the spectacularly clear picture of the planet shown here but were even able to get a spectrum of the planet. The analysis of this spectrum indicates that its atmosphere is cloudy.
The planetary mate of PDS 70 sculpted a transitional disc – a protoplanetary disc with a giant "hole" in the center. These internal gaps have been known for decades and it has been speculated that they have been produced by disk-planet interaction. Now we can see the planet for the first time.
Implications of Discovery
"Keppler's findings give us a new window on the complex and poorly understood early stages of global evolution," said Andre Muller "We needed to observe a planet in the disc of a young star to really understand the processes behind the formation of the planet, "says Muller.
By determining the atmospheric and physical properties of the planet, astronomers are able to test theoretical models of the formation of the planet.
This glimpse of the birth of a planet could only be possible thanks to the awesome technological capabilities of ESO's SPHERE instrument that studies exoplanets and disks around nearby stars. Like high-contrast imaging – a difficult feat.
Even by blocking the light of a star with a coronograph, SPHERE must always use observation strategies and cleverly designed data p processing techniques to filter the signal of weak planetary companions around youngsters brilliant stars at multiple wavelengths and epochs
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