What specific processes are responsible for planetary formation and evolution? This is what a recent study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to address as an international team of researchers used a rare finding to investigate a planet-forming disk comprised of a young gas giant that’s a few times larger than Jupiter’s mass. This study has the potential to offer scientists a glimpse into the unique processes responsible for planetary formation and evolution and what this could mean for finding life beyond Earth.
For the study, the researchers used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile to observe the 2MASSJ16120668-3010270 system (also called RIK113), which is located approximately 430 light-years from Earth. Through near-infrared light, the astronomers were able to obtain incredible details of this disk, which is estimated to be approximately 130 astronomical units (AU) in radius. For context, the planet Neptune is 30 AU from the Sun. These details included the system’s star, two rings of dust and gas separated by a gap where the planet if allegedly forming, and spiral arms within the inner ring of gas and dust potentially caused by the forming planet.
Credit: ESO/C. Ginski et al
“While our team has now observed close to 100 possible planet-forming disks around nearby stars, this image is something special,” said Dr. Christian Ginski, who is a lecturer at the University of Galway and lead author of the study. “One rarely finds a system with both rings and spiral arms in a configuration that almost perfectly fits the predictions of how a forming planet is supposed to shape its parent disk according to theoretical models. Detections like this bring us one step closer to understand how planets form in general and how our solar system might have formed in the distant past.”
Going forward, the team aspires to confirm the existence of the potential planet having an atmosphere, which could further our understanding of planetary formation and evolution.
What new discoveries about planetary formation and evolution will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Astronomy & Astrophysics, EurekAlert!
