A stunning new image released today by the European Southern Observatory gives us clues about how planets the size of Jupiter form. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have detected large dusty clumps, near a young star, that can collapse to form giant planets.
“This discovery is really impressive because it marks the first detection of clusters around a young star with the potential to form giant planets,” said Alice Zurlo, a researcher at the Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, who was involved in the observations.
Research describing the discovery was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The work is based on a stunning image obtained with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s VLT that shows fascinating detail of the material around the star V960 Mon. This young star is located more than 5000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros and attracted the attention of astronomers when it suddenly increased in brightness more than twenty-fold in 2014. SPHERE observations taken shortly after the start of this luminous “outburst” revealed that the material orbiting V960 Mon has assembled an entire solar arm larger than the compact distance. .
This finding then inspired astronomers to analyze the archived observations of the same system made by ALMA, of which ESO is a partner. VLT observations probe the surface of the dusty material around the star, while ALMA can peer into its deeper structure. “With ALMA, it became apparent that the spiral arms were undergoing fragmentation, resulting in the formation of clumps with masses similar to planets,” said Zurlo.
Astronomers believe that giant planets form through “core accretion,” when dust grains coalesce, or through “gravitational instability,” when large chunks of material around a star contract and collapse. While researchers have previously found evidence for the first of these scenarios, support for the latter has been sparse.
“No one has seen a real observation of gravitational instability occurring on planetary scales – until now,” said Philipp Weber, a researcher at the University of Santiago, Chile, who led the study.
“Our team has been looking for clues to how planets form for over ten years, and we couldn’t be more excited about this amazing discovery,” said team member Sebastián Pérez from the University of Santiago, Chile.
ESO’s instruments help astronomers reveal more details of this fascinating planetary system in the making, and ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) plays a key role. Currently being built in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the ELT will be able to observe the system in more detail than ever before, collecting important information about it.
“The ELT will be able to explore the chemical complexity surrounding these clusters, helping us learn more about the composition of the material from which the potential planets formed,” concluded Weber.
More information:
Spirals and clumps in V960 Mon: signs of planet formation by gravitational instability around the FU Ori star? Astrophysical Journal Letters (2023). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ace186
Citation: New image reveals secrets of planet birth (2023, July 25) retrieved on July 25, 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-07-image-reveals-secrets-planet-birth.html
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