The nascent planet photographed by astronomers for the first time

If you want to make astronomers crazy at a party, ask them by chance how planets are formed.

Despite 400 years of modern astronomy, many compelling theories and countless simulations using supercomputers, we still do not know much about how the disc debris d & rsquo; A young star becomes an orderly solar system.

The blinding starlight and incredible distances make it difficult to learn what is happening in planetary nurseries.

However, a team of astronomers released Monday what they say is the first image of a newborn planet.

In the photo above, the parent star of the planet, called PDS 70, is stuck at the center to help the astronomers to see the planetary disk that surrounds it. The world of babies, called PDS 70b, appears in the form of a bright orange-yellow spot just right and below. (The large oval is a more distant dust and gas that can form new planets.)

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The picture took over four years to do, involving more than 125 scientists, and was published in two studies in the journal. Astronomy and Astrophysics on Monday.

"These discs around the young stars are the birthplaces of the planets, but up to here only a handful of observations have detected clues of baby planets," Miriam Kepler, researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy who helped lead the research. , said in a press release. "The problem is that so far, most of these candidates on the planet might just have been features in the disc."

What the baby's picture tells us

Astronomers have taken the image of the newborn planet with the Very Large Telescope, which is actually a set of four observatories in the desert. Atacama in northern Chile. Specifically, the scientists used an instrument called SPHERE, which was built over the last decade to study distant planetary systems.

At only 5.4 million years ago, the infant planet is very young compared to the Earth, which is more than 4.5 billion years old.

The star, PDS 70, is about 82% as massive as the sun and 370 light years from Earth.

The baby planet puts 120 Earth-years in orbit around the star, at a distance of about 22 astronomical units. An astronomical unit is the distance between the sun and the Earth, nearly 93 million miles. So, if you cast the PDS 70b into our own solar system, the world would turn somewhere between Uranus and Neptune.

PDS 70b has an atmosphere – but it's not a place you would like to visit. Astronomers who have studied the data believe that the world is a gas giant whose atmosphere is about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to melt the lead. The planet is as strong as some Jupiters, which are in the upper part of the planethood. If he was taller, he would be considered a type of failed star called a brown dwarf.

Researchers now hope to use the new image to sort out a series of conflicting theories about the date of solar system construction, how quickly and by what means.

"This discovery shows us that we are finally able to find and study planets at the time of their formation," said Thomas Henning, author of both studies, in a press release. "It's the fulfillment of a long cherished dream."