An image of dust clumps near a young star reveals clues about the creation of giant planets

July 25 () –

An image of dust clumps near a young star made using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveals clues about how a “massive” planet like Jupiter could form, as reported by the European Southern Observatory. This research is presented in an article published in ‘The Astrophysical Journal Letters’.

“This discovery is truly captivating, as it marks the first detection, around a young star, of clusters that have the potential to give rise to giant planets.”has pointed out the researcher at the Diego Portales University of Chile, Alice Zurlo, who participated in the observations.

Specifically, the work is based on an image obtained with the instrument ‘Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch’ (SPHERE) from the ESO VLT showing details of the material around the star ‘V960 Mon’, a star over 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros, which attracted astronomers’ attention when it suddenly brightened more than twenty-fold in 2014.

Thus, observations of SPHERE made shortly after the onset of this “burst” of brightness revealed that material orbiting ‘V960 Mon’ is clumping into a series of intricate spiral arms that extend to distances greater than the entire Solar System.

In this sense, the researchers have detailed that this finding motivated astronomers to analyze archival observations of the same system made with ALMA, of which ESO is a partner.

Specifically, the VLT observations probe the surface of the dusty material around the star, while ALMA can examine its structure “deeper.” “With ALMA, it became clear that the spiral arms are fragmenting, resulting in the formation of clumps with masses similar to those of planets.Zurlo explained.

Astronomers have detailed that they believe giant planets form by “core accretion,” when dust grains clump together, or by “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, evidence supporting the second has been indicated to have been “scant.”

“Until now, no one had seen a real observation of gravitational instability on a planetary scale.“, said the researcher at the University of Santiago de Chile, Philipp Weber, who led the study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

In this sense, the member of the University of Santiago de Chile, Sebastián Pérez, has indicated that his group has been “for more than ten years looking for indications of how planets are formed”, so they are “excited by this incredible discovery”.

According to the researchers, the ESO instruments will help astronomers to reveal more details of this planetary system in formationand ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will play a “key role”.

Thus, they have added that in the Atacama desert in Chile, the ELT will be able to observe the system in “more detail than ever, collecting crucial information about it.”

“The ELT will allow us to explore the chemical complexity surrounding these clusters, helping us discover more about the composition of the material from which potential planets are forming.Weber concluded.

The team for this work is made up of young researchers from various Chilean universities and institutes, within the framework of the ‘Millennium Nucleus on Young Exoplanets and their Moons’ (YEMS) research center, financed by the Chilean National Research and Development Agency (ANID) and its ‘Millennium Science Initiative’ programme. The two facilities used, ALMA and VLT, are located in the Atacama desert in Chile.