We can’t understand what we can’t clearly see. That fact plagues scientists who study how planets form. Planet formation happens inside a thick, obscuring disk of gas and dust. But when it comes to seeing through that dust to where nascent planets begin to take shape, astronomers have a powerful new tool: the James Webb Space Telescope.
Continue reading “Webb Joins the Hunt for Protoplanets”Webb Finds Hints of a Third Planet at PDS 70
The exoplanet census now stands at 5,599 confirmed discoveries in 4,163 star systems, with another 10,157 candidates awaiting confirmation. So far, the vast majority of these have been detected using indirect methods, including Transit Photometry (74.4%) and Radial Velocity measurements (19.4%). Only nineteen (or 1.2%) were detected via Direct Imaging, a method where light emitted or reflected from an exoplanet’s atmosphere or surface is used to detect and characterize it. Thanks to the latest generation of high-contrast and high-angular resolution instruments, this is starting to change.
This includes the James Webb Space Telescope and its sophisticated mirrors and advanced infrared imaging suite. Using data obtained by Webb‘s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), astronomers within the MIRI mid-INfrared Disk Survey (MINDS) survey recently studied a very young variable star (PDS 70) about 370 light-years away with two confirmed protoplanets. After examining the system and its extended protoplanetary disk, they found evidence of a third possible protoplanet orbiting the star. These observations could help advance our understanding of planetary systems that are still in the process of formation.
Continue reading “Webb Finds Hints of a Third Planet at PDS 70”Massive Stars Have the Power to Shape Solar Systems
Stars shape their solar systems. It’s true of ours, and it’s true of others. But for some massive stars, their power to shape still-forming systems is fateful and final.
Continue reading “Massive Stars Have the Power to Shape Solar Systems”Some Young Planets Are Flattened Smarties, not Spheres.
One of contemporary astronomy’s most pressing questions concerns planet formation. We can see more deeply than ever into very young solar systems where planets are taking shape in the disks around young stars. But our view is still clouded by all the gas and dust in these young systems.
The picture of planet formation just got cloudier with the discovery that some young planets are shaped like flattened candies rather than spheres.
Continue reading “Some Young Planets Are Flattened Smarties, not Spheres.”Three Iron Rings Around A Star Show Where Planets are Forming
Researchers using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) have found three iron rings around a young star about 500 light-years away. The rings indicate that planets are forming. What can these rings tell us about how Earth and the other planets in our Solar System formed?
Continue reading “Three Iron Rings Around A Star Show Where Planets are Forming”Webb Finds Icy Complex Organic Molecules Around Protostars: Ethanol, Methane, Formaldehyde, Formic Acid and Much More
In the quest to understand how and where life might arise in the galaxy, astronomers search for its building blocks. Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) are some of those blocks, and they include things like formaldehyde and acetic acid, among many others. The JWST has found some of these COMs around young protostars. What does this tell astronomers?
Continue reading “Webb Finds Icy Complex Organic Molecules Around Protostars: Ethanol, Methane, Formaldehyde, Formic Acid and Much More”ALMA Takes Next-Level Images of a Protoplanetary Disk
The ESO’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is perched high in the Chilean Andes. ALMA is made of 66 high-precision antennae that all work together to observe light just between radio and infrared. Its specialty is cold objects, and in recent years, it has taken some stunning and scientifically illuminating images of protoplanetary disks and the planets forming in them.
But its newest image supersedes them all.
Continue reading “ALMA Takes Next-Level Images of a Protoplanetary Disk”JWST Follows Neon Signs Toward New Thinking on Planet Formation
Everyone knows that the James Webb Space Telescope is a ground-breaking infrared space telescope that’s helping us better understand the cosmos. The JWST’s discerning infrared eyes are deepening our understanding of everything from exoplanets to primitive galaxies to the birth of stars.
But it’s not the first ground-breaking infrared space telescope we’ve launched. There was IRAS, then ISO, then the Spitzer Space Telescope. The Spitzer is the JWST’s most recent infrared predecessor, and the JWST is observing one of the same targets that the Spitzer did, taking note of some puzzling changes.
Continue reading “JWST Follows Neon Signs Toward New Thinking on Planet Formation”JWST Sees Newly Forming Planets Swimming in Water
One big question about Earth’s formation is, where did all the water come from? New data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows newly forming planets in a system 370 light-years away are surrounded by water vapor in their orbits. Although astronomers have detected water vapor in protoplanetary disks before, this is the first time it’s been seen where the planets are forming.
Continue reading “JWST Sees Newly Forming Planets Swimming in Water”Some Star Systems Create a Planet Sandwich
A recent study presented at the National Astronomy Meeting 2023 (NAM2023) examines a newly discovered planetary formation theory that challenges previous notions on how planets are formed in the disks of gas and dust surrounding young stars, also known as protoplanetary disks. Along with being presented at NAM2023, the study has also been submitted for peer-review to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and holds the potential to help scientists better understand not only how planets form, but how life could form on them, as well.
Continue reading “Some Star Systems Create a Planet Sandwich”