Researchers have captured a mesmerizing image of what they believe to be a giant planet forming in the orbit of a young star, according to a new study.
“Young planets inside their forming disk help us to understand all the ingredients and how they interact with each other.
The young star at the center of the new image is named 2MASSJ16120668-3010270, or 2MASSJ1612 for short, and is located 430 light-years from our solar system.
“The stone is perturbing the water, sending out waves, somewhat similar to the planet in the disk,” Ginski said.
In the disk, where the planet circles around the star, this leads eventually to the formation of these spiral patterns.”
A fascinating image of what scientists think is a giant planet forming in the orbit of a young star has been captured by researchers, according to a recent study.
The image, captured with the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, depicts an eye-shaped disk of swirling dust and gas encircling the star. A dark ring inside the disk indicates that material is being accumulated by the gravity of a young planet, most likely a gas giant, as it circles the star.
“We are talking about a fairly massive planet here, a few times the mass of Jupiter most likely,” lead author Christian Ginski, who teaches physics at the University of Galway in Ireland, said in an email to Live Science. Material falls onto the planet during its orbit, clearing out a gap. In that regard, the planet could almost be compared to a hoover, collecting all the dust. “..”.
This might be a unique instance of a planet discovered in its early stages. Ginski and his team published a simulation of the possible giant exoplanet in the disk, and in the upcoming months, they intend to use the James Webb Space Telescope to confirm its existence.
The study has been accepted for future publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the researchers uploaded their findings to the preprint database arXiv on Monday, June 9.
Related: Our understanding of solar systems is called into question by the discovery of a giant planet orbiting a tiny red star.
Ginski and his colleagues are working to understand the forces required to form a solar system like ours and the diversity of planetary systems. In order to do this, they search for young stars that might be actively forming new planets. Although scientists have found thousands of planets orbiting far-off stars, Ginski pointed out that all of these are very old.
He explained, “We are essentially looking at the meal after it is fully cooked.”. We can better understand all the components and their interactions with one another when we look at young planets inside their forming disk. We currently only have one confirmed such planet in its early stages, along with two or three more candidates that are still pending confirmation. “..”.
Located 430 light-years away from our solar system, the young star at the center of the new image is known as 2MASSJ16120668-3010270, or simply 2MASSJ1612. Because of a 2024 study that found a gap in the star’s disk, scientists had already begun to suspect that a planet might be forming there.
Two spiral arms extending from the center of its disk are among the previously unobserved details revealed by the new study’s first view of 2MASSJ1612 in scattered near-infrared light. According to Ginski, the planet is causing the disk to change as it moves, which results in what are called density waves, which is how the arms form. He compared this effect to the waves produced when a stone is thrown into a pond.
Ginski remarked, “The stone is disturbing the water, generating waves, akin to the planet in the disk.”. “Now imagine the stone skipping across the water rather than diving straight in. The result is a wave pattern that gets increasingly complicated. This ultimately causes these spiral patterns to form in the disk, where the planet orbits the star. “..”.
Observing about 100 young star systems, Ginski said, scientists usually find either the spiral structures or the carved-out ring, but in this instance, the images showed both, as predicted by theoretical models of planet formation. He recalled how the pictures made him feel like “a kid on Christmas morning” at first.
