2023-08-22 13:15:00
Near the young star V960 Mon, large clumps of dust have been detected that could condense into giant planets. The finding gives clues as to how planets as massive as Jupiter could form.
The use of the VLT (Very Large Telescope) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has been vital for the discovery, as well as the use of the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), of the ESO and other institutions.
“This discovery is really captivating, since it marks the first detection, around a young star, of clusters that have the potential to give rise to giant planets,” says Alice Zurlo, a researcher at the Diego Portales University in Chile, who participated in in the observations.
The work, carried out by an international team of scientists, and published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, is based on a fascinating image obtained with the SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch) instrument on the VLT that shows fascinating details of the material around the star V960 Mon. This young star lies more than 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros, and it attracted astronomers’ attention when it suddenly brightened more than twenty-fold in 2014. SPHERE observations made shortly after the start of this The “burst” of brightness revealed that the material orbiting V960 Mon is clumping together in a series of intricate spiral arms that extend to distances greater than the entire solar system.
This finding motivated Philip Weber (Universidad de Santiago de Chile) and his colleagues to analyze archival ALMA observations of the same system. The VLT observations probe the surface of clumps of dusty material around the star, while ALMA can examine its structure more deeply. “With ALMA, it became clear that the spiral arms are fragmenting, resulting in the formation of clumps with masses similar to those of planets,” says Zurlo.
Combined image of the VLT’s ALMA and SPHERE showing the material orbiting V960 Mon. In the center of the photo is the young star V960 Mon. Observations obtained with the SPHERE instrument on the VLT are represented in yellow in this image. On the other hand, the blue regions represent data obtained with ALMA. (Image: ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Weber et al. CC BY 4.0)
Astronomers believe that giant planets form by “core accretion,” when dust grains clump together, or “gravitational instability,” when large chunks of material around a star collapse and collapse. While researchers have previously found evidence for the first of these scenarios, supporting evidence for the second has been scant.
“Until now, no one had seen a real observation of gravitational instability on a planetary scale,” says Philipp Weber, a researcher at the University of Santiago de Chile, who led the study.
“Our group has been looking for clues to how planets are formed for more than ten years, and we couldn’t be more excited about this incredible discovery,” says Sebastián Pérez, a member of the team from the University of Santiago de Chile.
ESO’s instruments will help astronomers reveal more details of this fascinating planet-forming system, and ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will play a key role. Currently under construction in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the ELT will be able to observe the system in more detail than ever before, gathering 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,” concludes Weber. (Source: IT. CC BY 4.0)
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