This is an Actual Image of a Planet-Forming Disc in a Distant Star System

An image of AB Aurigae from the ESO's VLT and its SPHERE instrument, showing what scientists think is a baby planet forming. Image Credit: ESO/Boccaletti et al.

In 2017, astronomers used ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array) to look at the star AB Aurigae. It’s a type of young star called a Herbig Ae star, and it’s less then 10 million years old. At that time, they found a dusty protoplanetary disk there, with tell-tale gaps indicating spiral arms.

Now they’ve taken another look, and found a very young planet forming there.

Continue reading “This is an Actual Image of a Planet-Forming Disc in a Distant Star System”

Astronomers Are Sure These Are Two Newborn Planets Orbiting a Distant Star

An artist's illustration of the PDS 70 system, not to scale. The two planets are clearing a gap in the circumstellar disk as they form. As they accrete in-falling material, the heat makes them glow. Image Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

Planet formation is a notoriously difficult thing to observe. Nascent planets are ensconced inside dusty wombs that resist our best observation efforts. But recently, astronomers have made progress in imaging these planetary newborns.

A new study presents the first-ever direct images of twin baby planets forming around their star.

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There Could be Planets Orbiting Around Supermassive Black Holes

Artist's impression of planets orbiting a supermassive black hole. Credit: Kagoshima University

Perhaps the greatest discovery to come from the “Golden Age of General Relativity” (ca. 1960 to 1975) was the realization that a supermassive black hole (SMBH) exists at the center of our galaxy. In time, scientists came to realize that similarly massive black holes were responsible for the extreme amounts of energy emanating from the active galactic nuclei (AGNs) of distant quasars.

Given their sheer size, mass, and energetic nature, scientists have known for some time that some pretty awesome things take place beyond the event horizon of an SMBH. But according to a recent study by a team of Japanese researchers, it is possible that SMBHs can actually form a system of planets! In fact, the research team concluded that SMBHs can form planetary systems that would put our Solar System to shame!

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A Red Dwarf Star Has a Jupiter-Like Planet. So Massive it Shouldn’t Exist, and Yet, There It Is

Artist's illustration of the newfound gas-giant planet GJ 3512b, which circles a red dwarf star. (Image credit: Guillem Anglada-Escude—IEEC/Science-wave, using SpaceEngine.org (CC BY 4.0))

Thanks to the Kepler mission and other efforts to find exoplanets, we’ve learned a lot about the exoplanet population. We know that we’re likely to find super-Earths and Neptune-mass exoplanets orbiting low-mass stars, while larger planets are found around more massive stars. This lines up well with the core accretion theory of planetary formation.

But not all of our observations comply with that theory. The discovery of a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a small red dwarf means our understanding of planetary formation might not be as clear as we thought. A second theory of planetary formation, called the disk instability theory, might explain this surprising discovery.

Continue reading “A Red Dwarf Star Has a Jupiter-Like Planet. So Massive it Shouldn’t Exist, and Yet, There It Is”

Hubble Sees a Huge Dust Cloud Around a Newly Forming Star

Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to uncover a vast, complex dust structure, about 150 billion miles across, enveloping the young star HR 4796A. Image:NASA/ESA/G. Schneider (Univ. of Arizona)

Younger stars have a cloud of dusty debris encircling them, called a circumstellar disk. This disk is material left over from the star’s formation, and it’s out of this material that planets form. But scientists using the Hubble have been studying an enormous dust structure some 150 billion miles across. Called an exo-ring, this newly imaged structure is much larger than a circumstellar disk, and the vast structure envelops the young star HR 4796A and its inner circumstellar disk.

Discovering a dust structure around a young star is not new, and the star in this new paper from Glenn Schneider of the University of Arizona is probably our most (and best) studied exoplanetary debris system. But Schneider’s paper, along with capturing this new enormous dust structure, seems to have uncovered some of the interplay between the bodies in the system that has previously been hidden.

Schneider used the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on the Hubble to study the system. The system’s inner disk was already well-known, but studying the larger structure has revealed more complexity.

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a vast, complex dust structure surrounding the star HR 4769A. The bright, inner ring is well-known to astronomers, but the huge dust structure surrounding the whole system is a new discovery. Image: NASA/ESA/G. Schneider (Univ. of Arizona)

The origin of this vast structure of dusty debris is likely collisions between newly forming planets within the smaller inner ring. Outward pressure from the star HR 4769A then propelled the dust outward into space. The star is 23 times more luminous than our Sun, so it has the necessary energy to send the dust such a great distance.

A press release from NASA describes this vast exo-ring structure as a “donut-shaped inner tube that got hit by a truck.” It extends much further in one direction than the other, and looks squashed on one side. The paper presents a couple possible causes for this asymmetric extension.

It could be a bow wave caused by the host star travelling through the interstellar medium. Or it could be under the gravitational influence of the star’s binary companion (HR 4796B), a red dwarf star located 54 billion miles from the primary star.

“The dust distribution is a telltale sign of how dynamically interactive the inner system containing the ring is'” – Glenn Schneider, University of Arizona, Tucson.

The asymmetrical nature of the vast exo-structure points to complex interactions between all of the stars and planets in the system. We’re accustomed to seeing the radiation pressure from the host star shape the gas and dust in a circumstellar disk, but this study presents us with a new level of complexity to account for. And studying this system may open a new window into how solar systems form over time.

Artist’s impression of circumstellar disk of debris around a distant star. These disk are common around younger stars, but the star in this study has a massive dust cloud that envelops and dwarfs the smaller, inner ring. Credit: NASA/JPL

“We cannot treat exoplanetary debris systems as simply being in isolation. Environmental effects, such as interactions with the interstellar medium and forces due to stellar companions, may have long-term implications for the evolution of such systems. The gross asymmetries of the outer dust field are telling us there are a lot of forces in play (beyond just host-star radiation pressure) that are moving the material around. We’ve seen effects like this in a few other systems, but here’s a case where we see a bunch of things going on at once,” Schneider further explained.

The paper suggests that the location and brightness of smaller rings within the larger dust structure places constraints on the masses and orbits of planets within the system, even when the planets themselves can’t be seen. But that will require more work to determine with any specificity.

This paper represents a refinement and advancement of the Hubble’s imaging capabilities. The paper’s author is hopeful that the same methods using in this study can be used on other similar systems to better understand these larger dust structures, how they form, and what role they play.

As he says in the paper’s conclusion, “With many, if not most, technical challenges now understood and addressed, this capability should be used to its fullest, prior to the end of the HST mission, to establish a legacy of the most robust images of high-priority exoplanetary debris systems as an enabling foundation for future investigations in exoplanetary systems science.”

A Planet With A 27,000 Year Orbit & That’s Just Where The Strangeness Begins

The star system CVSO 30, which was found to have two exoplanets with extreme orbital periods. If you look closely, you can see 30c to the upper left of the star. Credit: ESO

Every planet in the Solar System has its own peculiar orbit, and these vary considerably. Whereas planet Earth takes 365.25 days to complete a single orbit about our Sun, Mars takes almost twice as long – 686.971 days. Then you have Jupiter and the other gas giants, which take between 11.86 and 164.8 years to orbit our Sun. But even with these serving as examples, astronomers were not prepared for what they found when they looked at CVSO 30.

This star system, which lies some 1200 light years from Earth, has been found in recent years to have two candidate exoplanets. These planets, which are many times the mass of Jupiter, were discovered by an international team of astronomers using both the Transit Method and Direct Imaging. And what they found was very interesting: one planet has an orbital period of less than 11 days while the other takes a whopping 27,000 years to orbit its parent star!

In addition to being a big surprise, the detection of these two planets using different methods was an historic achievement. Up until now, the vast majority of the over 2,000 exoplanets discovered have been detected thanks to indirect methods. These include the aforementioned Transit Method, which detects planets by measuring the dimming effect they cause when crossing their parent star’s path, and the Radial Velocity Method, which measures the gravitational effect planets have on their parent star.

In 2012, astronomers used the Transit Method to detect CVSO 30b, a planet with 5 to 6 times the mass of Jupiter, and which orbits its star at a distance of only 1.2 million kilometers (by comparison, Mercury orbits our Sun at a distance of 58 million kilometers). From these characteristics, CVSO 30b can be described as a particularly “hot-Jupiter”.

In contrast, Direct Imaging has been used to spot only a few dozen exoplanets. The reason for this is because it is typically quite difficult to detect the light reflected by a planet’s atmosphere due it being drowned out by the light of its parent star. It can also be quite demanding when it comes to the instrument involved. Still, compared to indirect methods, it can be more effective when it comes to exploring the remote regions of a star.

Thanks to the efforts of an international team of astronomers, who combined the use of the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the Spanish National Research Council’s (CSIC) Calar Alto Observatory, CVSO 30c was spotted in remote regions around its parent star, orbiting at a distance of around 666 AU.

The details of the discovery were published in a paper titled “Direct Imaging discovery of a second planet candidate around the possibly transiting planet host CVSO 30“. In it, the researchers – who hail from such prestigious institutions as the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the Jena Observatory, the European Space Agency and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy – explained the methods used to find the exoplanet, and the significance of its discovery.

The star CVSO30, showing the two detection methods that revealed its exoplanet candidates. Credit: Keck Observatory/ESO/VLT/NACO
The star CVSO30, showing the two detection methods that revealed its exoplanet candidates. Credit: Keck Observatory/ESO/VLT/NACO

As Tobias Schmidt – of the University of Hamburg, the Astrophysical Institute and University Observatory Jena, and the lead author of the paper – told Universe Today via email:

“[30b and 30c] are both unusual on their own. CVSO 30b is the first transiting planet around a star as young as 2.5 million years. Published in 2012, all previously detected transiting planets were older than few hundred million years… It has been a surprise to find a planetary mass companion at 662 AU, or 662 times the distance from Earth to the Sun, from a primary star having only about 0.4 solar masses. According to the standard model, planets form in disks around the star. But none of the observed disks around such low-mass stars is large enough to form such an object.”

In other words, it is surprising to find two exoplanet candidates with several times the mass of Jupiter (aka. Super-Jupiters) orbiting a star as small as CVSO 30. But to find two exoplanets with such a disparity in terms of their respective distance from their star (despite being similar in mass) was particularly surprising.

Relying on high-contrast photometric and spectroscopic observations from the Very Large Telescope, the Keck telescopes and the Calar Alto observatory, the international team was able to spot 30c using a technique known as lucky imaging. This process, which is used by ground-based telescopes, involves many high-speed, quick exposure photos being taken to minimize atmospheric interference.

An artist's conception of a T-type brown dwarf. (Credit: Tyrogthekreeper under a Wikimedia Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).
An artist’s conception of a T-type brown dwarf. Credit: Tyrogthekreeper/Wikimedia Commons.

What they found was an exoplanet with a wide orbit that was between 4 and 5 Jupiter masses, and was also very young – less than 10 million years old. What’s more, the spectroscopic data indicated that it is unusually blue for a planet, as most other planet candidates of its kind are very red. The researchers concluded from this that it is likely that 30c is the first young planet of its kind to be directly imaged.

They further concluded that 30 c is also likely the first “L-T transition object” younger than 10 million years to be found orbiting a star. L-T transition objects are a type of brown dwarf – objects that are too large to be considered planets, but too small to be considered stars. Typically they are found embedded in large clouds of gas and dust, or on their own in space.

Paired with its companion – 30 b, which is impossibly close to its parent star – 30 c is not believed to have formed at its current position, and is likely not stable in the long-term. At least, not where current models of planetary formation and orbit are concerned. However, as Prof. Schmidt indicated, this offers a potential explanation for the odd nature of these exoplanets.

“We do think this is a very good hint,” he said, “that the two objects might have formed regularly around the star at a separation comparable to Jupiter or Saturn’s separation from the Sun, then interacted gravitationally and were scattered to their current orbits. However this is still speculation, further investigations will try to prove this. Both have about the same mass of few Jupiter masses, the inner one might be even lower.”

The Very Large Telescoping Interferometer firing it's adaptive optics laser. Credit: ESO/G. Hüdepohl
The Very Large Telescoping Interferometer firing it’s adaptive optics laser. Credit: ESO/G. Hüdepohl

The discovery is also significant since it was the first time that these two detection methods – Transit and Direct Imaging – were used to confirm exoplanet candidates around the same star. In this case, the methods were quite complimentary, and present opportunities to learn more about exoplanets. As Professor Schmidt explained:

“Both Transit method and radial velocity method have problems finding planets around young stars, as the activity of young stars is disturbing the search for them. CVSO 30 b was the first very young planet found with these methods, currently a hand full of candidates exist. Direct imaging, on the other hand, is working best for young planets as they still contract and are thus self-luminous. It is therefore great luck that a far out planet was found around the very first young star hosting a inner planet…

“However, the real advantage of transit and direct imaging methods is that the two objects can now be investigated in greater detail. While we can use the direct light from the imaging for spectroscopy, i.e. split the light according to its wavelength, we hope to achieve the same for the inner planet candidate. This is possible as the light passes through the atmosphere of the planet during transits and some of the elements are absorbed by the composition material of the atmosphere. So we do hope to learn a lot about planet formation, thus also formation of the early Solar System and about young planets in particular from the CVSO 30 system.”

Since astronomers first began began to find exoplanet candidates in distant star systems, we have come to learn just how diverse our Universe really is. Many of the discoveries have challenged our notions about where planets can form around their parent star, while others have showed us that planets can take many different forms.

As time goes on and our exploration of the local Universe advances, we will be challenged to find explanations for how it all fits together. And from that, new and more comprehensive models will no doubt emerge.

Further Reading: IAA, arXiv

A Star With A Disk Of Water Ice? Meet HD 100546

Young stars have a disk of gas and dust around them called a protoplanetary disk. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It might seem incongruous to find water ice in the disk of gas and dust surrounding a star. Fire and ice just don’t mix. We would never find ice near our Sun.

But our Sun is old. About 5 billion years old, with about 5 billion more to go. Some younger stars, of a type called Herbig Ae/Be stars (after American astronomer George Herbig,) are so young that they are surrounded by a circumstellar disk of gas and dust which hasn’t been used up by the formation of planets yet. For these types of stars, the presence of water ice is not necessarily unexpected.

Water ice plays an important role in a young solar system. Astronomers think that water ice helps large, gaseous, planets to form. The presence of ice makes the outer section of a planetary disk more dense. This increased density allows the cores of gas planets to coalesce and form.

Young solar systems have what is called a snowline. It is the boundary between terrestrial and gaseous planets. Beyond this snowline, ice in the protoplanetary disk encourages gas planets to form. Inside this snowline, the lack of water ice contributes to the formation of terrestrial planets. You can see this in our own Solar System, where the snowline must have been between Mars and Jupiter.

A team of astronomers using the Gemini telescope observed the presence of water ice in the protoplanetary disk surrounding the star HD 100546, a Herbig Ae/Be star about 320 light years from us. At only 10 million years old, this star is rather young, and it is a well-studied star. The Hubble has found complex, spiral patterns in the disk, and so far these patterns are unexplained.

HD 100546 is also notable because in 2013, research showed the probable ongoing formation of a planet in its disk. This presented a rare opportunity to study the early stages of planet formation. Finding ice in the disk, and discovering how deep it exists in the disk, is a key piece of information in understanding planet formation in young solar systems.

Finding this ice took some clever astro-sleuthing. The Gemini telescope was used, with its Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager (NICI), a tool used to study gas giants. The team installed H2O ice filters to help zero in on the presence of water ice. The protoplanetary disk around young stars, as in the case of HD 100546, is a mixed up combination of dusts and gases, and isolating types of materials in the disk is not easy.

Water ice has been found in disks around other Herbig Ae/Be stars, but the depth of distribution of that ice has not been easy to understand. This paper shows that the ice is present in the disk, but only shallowly, with UV photo desorption processes responsible for destroying water ice grains closer to the star.

It may seem trite so say that more study is needed, as the authors of the study say. But really, in science, isn’t more study always needed? Will we ever reach the end of understanding? Certainly not. And certainly not when it comes to the formation of planets, which is a pretty important thing to understand.

VLA Shows Early Stages Of Planet Formation In Unprecedented Detail

The million-year-old star HL Tau and its protoplanetary disk. Image: Carrasco-Gonzalez et. al.; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
The million-year-old star HL Tau and its protoplanetary disk. Image: Carrasco-Gonzalez et. al.; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

The currently accepted theory of planet formation goes like this: clouds of gas and dust are compressed or begin to draw together. When enough material clumps together, a star is formed and begins fusion. As the star, and its cloud of gas and dust rotate, other clumps of matter coagulate within the cloud, eventually forming planets. Voila, solar system.

There’s lots of evidence to support this, but getting a good look at the early stages of planetary formation has been difficult.

But now, an international team of astronomers using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have captured the earliest image yet of the process of planetary formation. “We believe this clump of dust represents the earliest stage in the formation of protoplanets, and this is the first time we’ve seen that stage,” said Thomas Henning, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA).

This story actually started back in 2014, when astronomers studied the star HL Tau and its dusty disk with the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array (ALMA.) That image, which showed gaps in HL Tau’s proto-planetary disk caused by proto-planets sweeping up dust in their orbits, was at the time the earliest image we had of planet formation. HL Tau is only about a million years old, so planet formation in HL Tau’s system was in its early days.

Now, astronomers have studied the same star, and its disk, with the VLA. The capabilities of the VLA allowed them do get an even better look at HL Tau and its disk, in particular the denser area closest to the star. What VLA revealed was a distinct clump of dust in the innermost region of the disk that contains between 3 to 8 times the mass of the Earth. That’s enough to form a few terrestrial planets of the type that inhabit our inner Solar System.

On the left is the ALMA image of HL Tau. On the right is the VLA image showing the clump of dust near the star. Image: Carrasco-Gonzalez et al,; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
On the left is the ALMA image of HL Tau. On the right is the VLA image showing the clump of dust near the star. Image: Carrasco-Gonzalez et al,; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

“This is an important discovery, because we have not yet been able to observe most stages in the process of planet formation,” said Carlos Carrasco-Gonzalez from the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics (IRyA) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Of course the star in question, HL Tau, is interesting as well. But the formation and evolution of stars is much more easily studied. It’s our theory of planet formation which needed some observational confirmation. “This is quite different from the case of star formation, where, in different objects, we have seen stars in different stages of their life cycle. With planets, we haven’t been so fortunate, so getting a look at this very early stage in planet formation is extremely valuable,” said Carrasco-Gonzalez.

ALMA Shows Off Baby Pictures… Baby Planets, That Is!

This is the sharpest image ever taken by ALMA — sharper than is routinely achieved in visible light with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star HL Tauri. These new ALMA observations reveal substructures within the disc that have never been seen before and even show the possible positions of planets forming in the dark patches within the system. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

In a test of its new high resolution capabilities, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is happily sharing some family snapshots with us. Astronomers manning the cameras have captured one of the best images so far of a newly-forming planet system gathering itself around a recently ignited star. Located about 450 light years from us in the constellation of Taurus, young HL Tau gathers material around it to hatch its planets and fascinate researchers.

Thanks to ALMA images, scientists have been able to witness stages of planetary formation which have been suspected, but never visually confirmed. This very young star is surrounded by several concentric rings of material which have neatly defined spacings. Is it possible these clearly marked gaps in the solar rubble disc could be where planets have started to gel?

“These features are almost certainly the result of young planet-like bodies that are being formed in the disk. This is surprising since HL Tau is no more than a million years old and such young stars are not expected to have large planetary bodies capable of producing the structures we see in this image,” said ALMA Deputy Director Stuartt Corder.

“When we first saw this image we were astounded at the spectacular level of detail. HL Tauri is no more than a million years old, yet already its disc appears to be full of forming planets. This one image alone will revolutionize theories of planet formation,” explained Catherine Vlahakis, ALMA Deputy Program Scientist and Lead Program Scientist for the ALMA Long Baseline Campaign.

Let’s take a look at what we understand about solar system formation…

Through repeated research, astronomers suspect that all stars are created when clouds of dust and gas succumb to gravity and collapse on themselves. As the star begins to evolve, the dust binds together – turning into “solar system soup” consisting of an array of different sized sand and rocks. This rubble eventually congeals into a thin disc surrounding the parent star and becomes home to newly formed asteroids, comets, and planets. As the planets collect material into themselves, their gravity re-shapes to structure of the disc which formed them. Like dragging a lawn sweeper over fallen leaves, these planets clear a path in their orbit and form gaps. Eventually their progress pulls the gas and dust into an even tighter and more clearly defined structure. Now ALMA has shown us what was once only a computer model. Everything we thought we knew about planetary formation is true and ALMA has proven it.

This is the sharpest image ever taken by ALMA — sharper than is routinely achieved in visible light with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star HL Tauri. The observations reveal substructures within the disc that have never been seen before and even show the possible positions of planets forming in the dark patches within the system. In this picture the features seen in the HL Tauri system are labelled.  Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
This is the sharpest image ever taken by ALMA — sharper than is routinely achieved in visible light with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star HL Tauri. The observations reveal substructures within the disc that have never been seen before and even show the possible positions of planets forming in the dark patches within the system. In this picture the features seen in the HL Tauri system are labelled. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

“This new and unexpected result provides an incredible view of the process of planet formation. Such clarity is essential to understand how our own solar system came to be and how planets form throughout the universe,” said Tony Beasley, director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Virginia, which manages ALMA operations for astronomers in North America.

“Most of what we know about planet formation today is based on theory. Images with this level of detail have up to now been relegated to computer simulations or artist’s impressions. This high resolution image of HL Tauri demonstrates what ALMA can achieve when it operates in its largest configuration and starts a new era in our exploration of the formation of stars and planets,” says Tim de Zeeuw, Director General of ESO.

The major reason astronomers have never seen this type of structure before is easy to envision. The very dust which creates the planetary disc around HL Tau also conceals it to visible light. Thanks to ALMA’s ability to “see” at much longer wavelengths, it can image what’s going on at the very heart of the cloud. “This is truly one of the most remarkable images ever seen at these wavelengths. The level of detail is so exquisite that it’s even more impressive than many optical images. The fact that we can see planets being born will help us understand not only how planets form around other stars but also the origin of our own solar system,” said NRAO astronomer Crystal Brogan.

How does ALMA do it? According to the research staff, its new high-resolution capabilities were achieved by spacing the antennas up to 15 kilometers apart. This baseline at millimeter wavelengths enabled a resolution of 35 milliarcseconds, which is equivalent to a penny as seen from more than 110 kilometers away. “Such a resolution can only be achieved with the long baseline capabilities of ALMA and provides astronomers with new information that is impossible to collect with any other facility, including the best optical observatories,” noted ALMA Director Pierre Cox.

This is a composite image of the young star HL Tauri and its surroundings using data from ALMA (enlarged in box at upper right) and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (rest of the picture). This is the first ALMA image where the image sharpness exceeds that normally attained with Hubble.  Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
This is a composite image of the young star HL Tauri and its surroundings using data from ALMA (enlarged in box at upper right) and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (rest of the picture). This is the first ALMA image where the image sharpness exceeds that normally attained with Hubble. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

The long baselines spell success for the ALMA observations and are a tribute to all the technology and engineering that went into its construction. Future observations at ALMA’s longest possible baseline of 16 kilometers will mean even more detailed images – and an opportunity to further expand our knowledge of the Cosmos and its workings. “This observation illustrates the dramatic and important results that come from NSF supporting world-class instrumentation such as ALMA,” said Fleming Crim, the National Science Foundation assistant director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. “ALMA is delivering on its enormous potential for revealing the distant universe and is playing a unique and transformational role in astronomy.”

Pass them baby pictures our way, Mama ALMA… We’re delighted to take a look!

Original Story Source: “Revolutionary ALMA Image Reveals Planetary Genesis” – ESO Press Release

Astronomers Spot Pebble-Size Dust Grains in the Orion Nebula

Radio/optical composite of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex showing the OMC-2/3 star-forming filament. GBT data is shown in orange. Uncommonly large dust grains there may kick-start planet formation. Credit: S. Schnee, et al.; B. Saxton, B. Kent (NRAO/AUI/NSF); We acknowledge the use of NASA's SkyView Facility located at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Stars and planets form out of vast clouds of dust and gas. Small pockets in these clouds collapse under the pull of gravity. But as the pocket shrinks, it spins rapidly, with the outer region flattening into a disk.

Eventually the central pocket collapses enough that its high temperature and density allows it to ignite nuclear fusion, while in the turbulent disk, microscopic bits of dust glob together to form planets. Theories predict that a typical dust grain is similar in size to fine soot or sand.

In recent years, however, millimeter-size dust grains — 100 to 1,000 times larger than the dust grains expected — have been spotted around a few select stars and brown dwarfs, suggesting that these particles may be more abundant than previous thought. Now, observations of the Orion nebula show a new object that may also be brimming with these pebble-size grains.

The team used the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope to observe the northern portion of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a star-forming region that spans hundreds of light-years. It contains long, dust-rich filaments, which are dotted with many dense cores. Some of the cores are just starting to coalesce, while others have already begun to form protostars.

Based on previous observations from the IRAM 30-meter radio telescope in Spain, the team expected to find a particular brightness to the dust emission. Instead, they found that it was much brighter.

“This means that the material in this region has different properties than would be expected for normal interstellar dust,” said Scott Schnee, from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in a press release. “In particular, since the particles are more efficient than expected at emitting at millimeter wavelengths, the grains are very likely to be at least a millimeter, and possibly as large as a centimeter across, or roughly the size of a small Lego-style building block.”

Such massive dust grains are hard to explain in any environment.

Around a star or a brown dwarf, it’s expected that drag forces cause large particles to lose kinetic energy and spiral in toward the star. This process should be relatively fast, but since planets are fairly common, many astronomers have put forth theories to explain how dust hangs around long enough to form planets. One such theory is the so-called dust trap: a mechanism that herds together large grains, keeping them from spiraling inward.

But these dust particles occur in a rather different environment. So the researchers propose two new intriguing theories for their origin.

The first is that the filaments themselves helped the dust grow to such colossal proportions. These regions, compared to molecular clouds in general, have lower temperatures, high densities, and lower velocities — all of which encourage grain growth.

The second is that the rocky particles originally grew inside a previous generation of cores or even protoplanetary disks. The material then escaped back into the surrounding molecular cloud.

This finding further challenges theories of how rocky, Earth-like planets form, suggesting that millimeter-size dust grains may jump-start planet formation and cause rocky planets to be much more common than previously thought.

The paper has been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.