In a first, astronomers witness the birth of a planet from gas and dust In the first convincing observation of its kind, astronomers have directly imaged a newborn planet still forming around its star. The planet, hotter than any in our solar system, supports what astronomers have long believed: that such bodies are born of the disks of gas and dust that coalesce around young stars. “After decades of speculation, it’s nice to actually see one. It’s very comforting,” says astronomer Kevin Heng of the University of Bern in Switzerland, who was not involved in the work. The initial discovery was led by astronomer Miriam Keppler of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany. Since 2015, her team has been regularly surveying hundreds of young stars for signs of exoplanets with a next-generation imaging instrument called SPHERE (for Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research), attached to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal in Chile. One of those stars was PDS 70, a 10-million-year-old dwarf star about 370 light-years from Earth. In 2016, the team looked back at 2015 observations of PDS 70. After additional processing of data, they saw signs of a bright point of light close to the star and clearly visible in a gap in the disk. “That’s the dream of every astronomer looking for planets,” says MPIA team member André Müller. Given that such detections are often controversial, the team followed up with new observations using other VLT instruments and with archived data from instruments on the VLT and the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachón in Chile. As they describe in a paper published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics , the planet, dubbed PDS 70b, remained visible in such a wide range of wavelengths of light that the team is confident it's not a mirage. “It’s a very interesting and pretty convincing result—a solid detection,” says Bruce Macintosh of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who leads a rival instrument called the Gemini Planet Imager. Macintosh says there have been tentative detections of very young planets before, but this one stands out. The newborn exoplanet "is very solidly bright and has very politely cleared a gap for itself,” making it even more visible. “It’s a very interesting and pretty convincing result—a solid detection.” Bruce Macintosh, Stanford University In another paper published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics , a separate group led by Müller estimated the size, mass, temperature, and orbit of the planet by plugging all the information into various orbital and atmospheric models. The group predicts that PDS 70b is several times more massive than Jupiter, with a cloudy atmosphere that hits temperatures of around 1000°C, despite orbiting its star at roughly the same distance as Uranus from the sun. Their models further suggest that PDS 70b itself has a circumplanetary disk of material that is accreting to its surface. The ability to make such predictions opens “a new chapter” in the science of planet formation, Müller says. Other researchers say such estimates are uncertain because it requires a lot of extrapolation to apply these models to such youthful stars. “It’s extremely tricky, especially when the planet is so young,” Heng says. But he and Macintosh agree that the detection of PDS 70b holds promise for unraveling the mysteries of how planets form and evolve. “It’s a good sign that planets at these ages are still bright [and so detectable] and can pull the disk apart to become visible,” Macintosh says. Keppler says the team will continue to observe the planet with SPHERE and with other instruments, hoping to detect it moving around its 120-year orbit. They’ve also applied for time on the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a collection of radio dishes in Chile. With that telescope’s ability to detect dust, they hope to get a glimpse of that circumplanetary disk.<doc-sep>Scientists have seen a newborn planet being formed for the first time ever. The stunning images, taken using the ESO's Very Large Telescope, offer an unprecedented view of the formation of planets. And the discovery could help us understand how planets are formed in much more detail than ever before. Until now, the act of planet formation has usually been hidden by a veil of dust. But in the new study astronomers led by a group at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy have finally been able to capture a spectacularly clear image of a planet breaking through the ‘disc’ from which it is formed. Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Show all 30 1 /30 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013 Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. 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This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Peers into the Most Crowded Place in the Milky Way This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way NASA & ESA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space An Astronaut's View from Space Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Giant Landform on Mars On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called “draa” Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Expedition 39 Landing A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Jupiter's Great Red Spot Viewed by Voyager I Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic.<doc-sep>Astronomers on Monday confirmed they've taken the first picture of a newborn planet. The planet, called PDS 70b, is about 370 light-years from Earth and orbits a young star. Although the distant exoplanet has a cloudy atmosphere, it's probably 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. If you want to drive astronomers crazy at a party, casually ask them how planets form. Despite 400 years of modern astronomy, many compelling theories, and countless supercomputer-powered simulations, we still don't know much about how a young star's disc of debris becomes an orderly solar system. Blinding starlight and incredible distances make it hard to learn about what's going on in planetary nurseries. However, a team of astronomers on Monday released what they say is the first-ever image of a newborn planet. An image of a newborn planet around PDS 70, a dwarf star 460 light-years from Earth. ESO/A. Müller et al. In the photo above, the planet's parent star, called PDS 70, is blocked out in the center to help astronomers see the planetary disc around it. The baby world, named PDS 70b, appears as the bright orange-yellow blob just off to the right and below. (The large oval is farther-out dust and gas that may form new planets.) The picture took more that four years to make, involved more than 125 scientists, and was published in two studies in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on Monday. "These discs around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of observations have detected hints of baby planets in them," Miriam Kepler, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy who helped lead the research, said in a press release. "The problem is that until now, most of these planet candidates could just have been features in the disc." What the baby picture tells us Astronomers took the image of the newborn planet with the Very Large Telescope, which is actually an array of four observatories in the high Atacama desert of northern Chile. Specifically, the scientists used an instrument called SPHERE, which was built within the last decade to study far-off planetary systems. The Very Large Telescope run by the European Southern Observatory in Chile. ESO At just 5.4 million years old, the infant planet is very youthful compared to 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 takes 120 Earth-years to orbit the star, at a distance of about 22 astronomical units. One astronomical unit is the distance between the sun and Earth, or nearly 93 million miles. So if you dropped PDS 70b into our own solar system, the world would orbit somewhere between Uranus and Neptune. PDS 70b has an atmosphere — but it's no place you'd want to visit. Astronomers who've studied the data believe the world is a gas giant whose atmosphere is about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to melt lead. The planet is also as hefty as a few Jupiters, which is on the upper range of planethood. If it were any larger, it'd be considered a type of failed star called a brown dwarf. Researchers now hope to use the new image to sorting through a raft of conflicting theories about when solar systems are built, 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," Thomas Henning, an author on both studies, said in a press release. "That is the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream."<doc-sep>
Story highlights The first confirmed image of a newborn planet was captured by a planet-hunting instrument The planet is still growing, which could shed new light on how planets form (CNN) — A planet-hunting instrument has captured the first confirmed image of a newborn planet that’s still forming in our galaxy. To the right of the black circle at the center of the image, the round bright planet can be seen within the disk of gas and dust around the young dwarf star PDS 70. Of course, the center isn’t naturally this dark. Instead, the researchers used a coronagraph to block the bright light of the star in order to look at the disk and the planet. European Southern Observatory/ESO/A. Müller et al. This is the first clear image of a planet caught in the act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. It’s carving out a path through the disk around the star, which is in the Centaurus constellation. The protoplanetary disk is the “planet factory” full of gas and dust around young stars. The planet was found in a gap in this disk, which means it is close to where it was born and still growing by accumulating material from the disk. The planet, dubbed PDS 70b, was detected by an international team using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and its planet-hunting instrument, called SPHERE. The instrument is considered to be one of the most powerful planet hunters in existence. The discovery by two teams of researchers is detailed in two papers published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on Monday. “These discs around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of observations have detected hints of baby planets in them,” Miriam Keppler of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, who led one team, said in a statement. “The problem is that until now, most of these planet candidates could just have been features in the disc.” André Müller, also with the Max Planck institute and leader of the second team, said in a statement that “Keppler’s results give us a new window onto the complex and poorly-understood early stages of planetary evolution. We needed to observe a planet in a young star’s disc to really understand the processes behind planet formation.” SPHERE was able to measure the planet’s brightness at different wavelengths, which enabled the researchers to determine the properties of its atmosphere. This is incredibly challenging, because even though SPHERE used the coronagraph to block the star, it had to seek out the planet’s signal in multiple ways. Researchers were able to determine that it’s a giant gas planet and has a blisteringly hot surface temperature of 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit. This is at least a few times the mass of Jupiter, the largest gas giant in our solar system, and well above the highest temperature recorded on any planet in our solar system. They also deduced that it has a cloudy atmosphere. Although the planet looks close to its star in the image, it’s 1,864,113,576 miles away. That’s the same distance as Uranus from our sun. It takes the planet 120 years to orbit the star, which fits with astronomers’ predictions that gas giants would need to form quite far from their stars. Directly imaging the planet is a game-changer. Going forward, researchers will be able test models of how planets form and learn more about the history of how the earliest planetary systems formed, like our own solar system. “After more than a decade of enormous efforts to build this high-tech machine, now SPHERE enables us to reap the harvest with the discovery of baby planets!” Thomas Henning, director at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and leader of the teams, said in a statement.