New baby planet twice as big as Neptune emerges from dust around sun-like star, astronomers reveal big discovery; details inside
Notably, it is the first time around that a planet has been found embedded inside a dust spiral around a star, actively shaping its environment. According to
NASA
, the latest discovery further strengthens the proof that the building blocks of planets emerge from protoplanetary disks, giant, doughnut-shaped disks of gas and dust that circle young stars.
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These dense, rotating clouds of material around young stars have been observed to have rings and spirals, which are suspected to be caused by baby planets, but this is the first direct evidence.
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Astronomers previously saw the sculpted protoplanetary disk around the star HD 135344B using the SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research) instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.
How did scientists discover baby planet
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Scientists finally discovered a new planet using a new instrument called the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS).
The planet sits at the base of one spiral arm, exactly where models predicted a planet would need to be to create this feature, and is believed to be twice the size of Jupiter. It's located about as far from its host star as Neptune is from the Sun, roughly 30 times the distance from Earth to the Sun.
What did researchers say about planet discovery
"What makes this detection potentially a turning point is that, unlike many previous observations, we can directly detect the signal of the protoplanet, which is still highly embedded in the disc," Francesco Maio, a doctoral researcher at the University of Florence and lead author of a study describing the discovery, was quoted by Live Science as saying in a statement.
The existence of many exoplanets, which are planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, is inferred from other data, such as a dip in a star's brightness that is believed to be caused by a planet. Seeing the planet's light, reflected from its host star, gives the discoverers of the protoplanet much greater confidence in its existence.
"We will never witness the formation of Earth, but here, around a young star 440 light-years away, we may be watching a planet come into existence in real time," Maio said.
Other discoveries by ERIS
ERIS also played a decisive role of a similar nature in another recent discovery. Astronomers used ERIS to find an object, possibly a brown dwarf, an object halfway between a giant planet and a small star, in the protoplanetary disk around the young star V960 Mon, located 5,000 light-years away, in the constellation Monoceros.
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