2024-01-08 12:02:55
Observations with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) found several silicate compounds and potentially iron, substances widely present on the rocky planets of the Solar System – JENRY
MADRID, 8 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The interferometer of VLT (Very Large Telescope) The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has observed three concentric rings with dust containing evidence of iron in a planet-forming disk.
These are structures very close to the young star HD 144432, located about 500 light years away, an unprecedented finding that is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
“This region corresponds to the area where the rocky planets were formed in the solar system,” adds the author of the research Roy van Boekel, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA). Compared to the solar system, the first ring around HD 144432 is located within the orbit of Mercury and the second is close to the path of Mars. Furthermore, the third ring roughly corresponds to the orbit of Jupiter.
So far, astronomers have found such configurations predominantly on larger scales, corresponding to the realms beyond where Saturn orbits the sun. Ring systems in disks around young stars generally They point to the formation of planets within the spaces as they accumulate dust and gas in their path.
However, HD 144432 is the first example of such a complex ring system so close to its host star. It occurs in an area rich in dust, the cornerstone of rocky planets like Earth. Assuming that the rings indicate the presence of two planets forming within the gaps, Astronomers estimated their masses to roughly resemble those of Jupiter.
The astronomers determined the composition of the dust along the disk up to a separation from the central star that corresponds to Jupiter’s distance from the Sun. What they found is very familiar to scientists who study Earth and the rocky planets of the solar system: various silicates (compounds of metal, silicon and oxygen) and other minerals present in the Earth’s crust and mantle, and possibly metallic iron such as that present in Mercury and Earth. cores. If confirmed, this study would be the first to discover iron in a planet-forming disk.
“So far astronomers have explained observations of dusty disks with a mixture of carbon and silicate dust, materials that we see almost everywhere in the universe,” explains van Boekel. However, from a chemical point of view, a mixture of iron and silicate is more plausible for the hot internal areas of the disk.
In fact, the chemical model that József Varga, of the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest and lead author of the underlying research paper, applied to the data yields results that fit better by introducing iron instead of carbon.
Additionally, dust observed in the HD 144432 disk can reach temperatures of up to 1800 Kelvin (approximately 1500 degrees Celsius) on the inner edge and moderate temperatures of up to 300 Kelvin (approximately 25 degrees Celsius) on the outer edge. Minerals and iron melt and recondense, often in the form of crystals, in the hot regions close to the star.
In turn, the carbon grains would not survive the heat and would instead be present as carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide. However, carbon may still be an important component of solid particles in the cold outer disk, something that the observations made for this study cannot track.
Iron-rich, carbon-poor dust would also fit well with solar system conditions. Mercury and Earth are iron-rich planets, while Earth contains relatively little carbon. “We think the HD 144432 disk may be very similar to the early solar system that provided a lot of iron to the rocky planets we know today,” says van Boekel. “Our study may be another example showing that the composition of our solar system may be quite typical.”
Recovering the results was only possible with exceptionally high resolution observations, such as those provided by the VLTI. By combining the four 8.2-metre VLT telescopes at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, they can resolve details as if astronomers used a telescope with a 200-metre diameter primary mirror. Varga, van Boekel and their collaborators obtained data using three instruments to achieve wide length coverage wave which ranges between 1.6 and 13 micrometers, which represents infrared light.
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