Astronomers Discover Likely Site Of New Gas Giant Planet In Formation

Astronomers used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) in Chile to discover a new site of a new planet in formation, which is most likely a gas giant planet, according to findings published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. According to the team of astronomers, led by the University of Galway, the planet is many times the mass of Jupiter.

The astronomers took stunning images of a distant young star for the first time. The pictures were captured in the form of scattered near-infrared light, which revealed a structured disk. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) published a stunning view of the new planet-forming disk as its picture of the week on Monday (June 9).

The disc was seen extended to 130 astronomical units from its parent star. A bright ring and a gap at the centre, roughly 50 astronomical units, were also seen in the images. For comparison, one astronomical unit is the approximate mean distance between Earth and the sun. It's about 93 million miles. Meanwhile, Neptune, which is the outermost planet in our solar system, has an orbital distance from the sun of 30 astronomical units.

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"While our team has now observed close to 100 possible planet-forming discs around nearby stars, this image is something special," said Dr Christian Ginski, who led the study.

"One rarely finds a system with both rings and spiral arms in a configuration that almost perfectly fits the predictions of how a forming planet is supposed to shape its parent disk according to theoretical models," said Dr Ginski who is from the Centre for Astronomy in the School of Natural Sciences at University of Galway.

"Detections like this bring us one step closer to understand how planets form in general and how our solar system might have formed in the distant past," Ginski further added.

Team hopes to take an actual image

The astronomers now hope to be able to take an actual image of the young planet using the sensitivity of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Researchers will be able to study the planet-disk interaction if planets in the disk are confirmed.

Chloe Lawlor, Ph.D. student in Physics with a specialisation in Astrophysics, University of Galway, said, "Working with Dr. Christian Ginski on the 2MASS1612 paper has been an incredible experience. As an early-career researcher, having the opportunity to contribute to such exciting work has been especially rewarding. This work has been the perfect introduction to scientific writing and collaboration, and I'm very grateful for this kick-start to my research career."