NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope recently captured a protoplanet forming through an “intense and violent process,” in which the planet forms in a protoplanetary disk with a distinctive spiral structure orbiting a young star about two million years old.
NASA’s Hubble Telescope
Scientists have named this planet Auriga b, and it is claimed to be nine times larger than Jupiter, orbiting its host star at a whopping 13.5 billion km distance, and at that distance, it would take a very long time to complete its orbit.
Scientists suggest that the planet is forming at such a huge distance due to the instability of the disk, which is contrary to predictions of planet formation by the widely accepted core accretion model.
For the analysis, the scientists collected data from two Hubble instruments: the Space Telescope’s Imaging Spectroradiometer and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph, and compared the data with that obtained from the Advanced Planetary Imaging Instrument on Japan’s 8.2-meter Subaru telescope at the summit Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
“Interpreting this system is a huge challenge,” said Thane Currie, the study’s lead author.
Measurement of the orbits of the protoplanets
“Hubble’s longevity has played a special role in helping researchers measure the orbits of the protoplanets, as they were originally very skeptical that Auriga b was a planet, and archival data from Hubble, combined with imaging from the Subaru telescope, proved it to be a turning point in the change their opinion.”
“We couldn’t detect this motion for a year or two, but Hubble gave us a time baseline, along with Subaru data, for 13 years, which was enough to detect orbital motion.”
“This discovery is strong evidence that some gas giant planets can form through the mechanism of disk instability,” said Alan Buss of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC. The gravitational path of planet formation, one way or another.”
Source: Tech Explorist