A team of astronomers has taken spectacular pictures of an apparently gas giant planet, which is 430 light years away from the earth. The discovery under the direction of researchers at the University of Galway provides rare visual evidence of how planets are born in swirling dust and gas panes for young stars.
The international team of Dr. Christian Ginski from the University of Galway photographed the 2mass1612 system and revealed an exceptionally structured hard drive, using the very large telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The disc includes enormous astronomical units (an astronomical unit is the average distance between the earth and the sun), which means that it is 130 -larger than the distance between earth and our sun. To put this in the right perspective, this hard drive would easily swallow our entire solar system
The Cerro Paranal Mountain Top houses one of the world's most advanced floor-based facility for astronomy and organizes the four 8.2-meter-telescopes of the very large telescope, four 1.8-meter aid telescopes and the VLT survey telescope (Credit: ESO/G. Hüdepohl)
What makes this discovery particularly exciting is the distinctive structure of the hard drive. The researchers observed a bright ring, followed by a gap in around 50 astronomical units from the star. In this gap, the spiral arms rotate inwards like the eye of a hurricane. This observation almost perfectly corresponds to the theoretical predictions of how a forming planet should form its surrounding disc.
The evidence indicates that a gas giant planet forms in this system, possibly more massive than Jupiter. The gravitational influence of the planet creates the observed rings and spirals when it picks up material from the window and brings gaps out in its circulation. This process, which is referred to as a planet-disc interaction, is of fundamental importance for understanding how all planets form, including those in our own solar system, billions of years ago.
“You rarely find a system with rings and spiral arms in a configuration that almost perfectly suits the predictions, how a forming planet should shape its overarching hard drive according to theoretical models.” – Dr. Christian Ginski.
This discovery shows the collaborative character of modern astronomy. Four students from the University of Galway play a crucial role in the analysis. Chloe Lawlor, Jake Byrne, Dan McLachlan and Matthew Murphy all contributed to the processing and interpretation of the complex observation data.
It also represents a significant step forward in our understanding of the planet formation. While the team has observed almost 100 possible planets, forming the windows in nearby stars, this special system for its textbook, perfect structure, which matches theoretical models.
The team has already secured time in the James Webb Space Telescope for follow-up observations. With the unprecedented sensitivity of Webb, you hope to take an actual picture of the formative planet yourself and definitely confirm its presence. If successful, this system becomes a main laboratory to examine how planets and their hard drives interact during the educational process.
Artist Illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope (Credit: NASA)
This discovery not only promotes our scientific understanding, but also offers an insight into the way our own solar system looked like in its earliest days when the planets we know today, just combined by a similar dust and gas.
Source: Researchers discover the probable position of the new planet in education
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