About 370 light-years from Earth, a large, cloudy planet is being born – and astronomers have taken an incredibly detailed picture of its delivery process. The image is one of the most robust we have of a planet being formed, and it could help us learn more about how the worlds outside our solar system are appeared
. Large telescope in Chile, were able to capture a planet just a few times the mass of Jupiter being formed around a young star. The image shows the object that takes shape inside the big cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the new stars, what is called a protoplanetary disk. These discs consist of all the remaining materials when a star is born, and the dust inside them can converge to form new planets.
This star would have 5.4 million years – a newborn on the cosmological scale [19659004] This star, nicknamed PDS 70, would have 5.4 million years – a new cosmologically. Astronomers have thought for a moment that new planets could emerge around the star. Previous images of the sun showed large areas in its protoplanetary disk where the material was cleared. This is usually a good indicator that the planets are forming in the interior; new worlds gobble up gas and dust in the disc to get bigger. "For a while, it was thought that planets could form on this disc," says Miriam Keppler, PhD student at the Max Planck Institute and lead author of an article describing the discovery of the planet The Verge . "Now we have proof that there is at least one."
To get the planet's image, astronomers used an instrument to block the star's light, known as a coronagraph. Detecting planets around distant stars can be incredibly difficult because starlight usually dominates the planet much darker. But a coronograph made it possible to see and take a picture of the neighboring planet, called PDS 70b. This technique has helped astronomers to learn that the planet is 22 times farther from its star than Earth is to the Sun – a distance similar to the gap between our Sun and Uranus. However, this planet is much hotter than Uranus or any other planet in our solar system. According to the analysis of the team, its surface is about 1832 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius).
Astronomers have already captured images of planets born around distant stars, but Keppler says that the authenticity of these images is often debated. . It is not always certain that astronomers have actually found a planet or have found another feature in the disk of a star. The images of the protoplanetary disks must go through a lot of processing, and the algorithms used by astronomers can sometimes give the impression that a planet exists around a star when it is not there . However, Keppler is confident that it is the best detection of a planet being born around a star because they have studied this system for a while in different ways.
"We took pictures at different places, different dates, different algorithms used, different wavelengths of light," says Keppler. "If that was [an anomaly] we did not. would not have detected in such a consistent way. "
Keppler and the astronomy team plan to continue to observe this star system in formation." André Müller, a Max Planck researcher who has directed the imaging team, said that they hope to get a glimpse of the time it takes for new planets to come together and what processes are needed to form a baby world. "With our data and future observations, we will be able to better characterize the system and learn much more about the young planets."
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