Planetary Formation Archives

February 16, 2023February 16, 2023 by Evan Gough

What Would Happen if the Solar System Gained a Super-Earth?

This illustration shows the super-Earth exoplanet 55 Cancri e with its star. What would our Solar System be like if it was home to a super-Earth like this one? Credit: NASA/JPL

In this era of exoplanet discovery, astronomers have found over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets, with thousands more awaiting confirmation and many billions more waiting to be discovered. These exoplanets exist in a bewildering spectrum of sizes, compositions, orbital periods, and just about every other characteristic that can be measured.

Learning about them has also shed light on our Solar System. We used to think of it as an archetypal arrangement of planets since it’s all we had to go on. But now we know we might be the outlier because we have no Super-Earth.

December 9, 2022December 7, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Most Exoplanets Suffer Worse Space Weather Than We Do

An artistic rendering of a series of powerful stellar flares. New research says that flaring activity may not prevent life on exoplanets. CREDIT NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger

We have it relatively easy on the Earth. Our Sun is relatively calm. The space weather environment in the solar system is altogether placid. Things are nice. But new research has shown that we may be the exception rather than the rule, and that many exoplanets face much harsher conditions than we do.

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December 8, 2022December 7, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Trading Spaces: How Swapping Stars Create Hot Jupiters

An artist's conception of the hot Jupiter WASP-79b. (Image credit: NASA)

Star clusters tend to host more hot Jupiters than average, but why? A team of astronomers have proposed a new solution, and it involves a lot of swapping of stellar neighbors.

November 29, 2022November 29, 2022 by Evan Gough

Baby Gas Giants Cast Shadows on Their Siblings

A computer-generated image depicting a dark protostellar disk seen edge-on at 90 degrees to jets (orange) emanating from the poles of a young star. Such disks are thought to be the precursors of planetary systems, with planets forming as the dust coalesces. RIKEN researchers may have spotted embryos of gas giant planets in one protostellar disk. Credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library

A team of astronomers has caught glimpses of gas giants forming around a very young star.

The nascent giants are having a chilling effect on their potential siblings.

November 5, 2022November 2, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

It’s Tough to Find Evidence of Stars Eating Planets

Tragically sometimes stars engulf their own planets. While most stars are able to quickly cover up the evidence for their crime, a new study by astronomers has revealed that in some cases the evidence can linger for up to two billion years.

September 17, 2022September 17, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

A new way to Discover Planets? Astronomers Detect an Exoplanet by Seeing its Trojan Belts

Artist view of a planet and protoplanetary disk around a young star. Credit: M.Weiss/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

Although we have found thousands of exoplanets in recent years, we really only have three methods of finding them. The first is to observe a star dimming slightly as a planet passes in front of it (transit method). The second is to measure the wobble of a star as an orbiting planet gives it a gravitational tug (Doppler method). The third is to observe the exoplanet directly. Now a new study in the Astrophysical Journal Letters has a fourth method.

August 14, 2022August 14, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

Hot Stars Blast Away at gas Giants Until Only Their Rocky Cores Remain

Artist view of a Neptune-sized planet orbiting a blue A-type star. Credit: Steven Giacalone, UC Berkeley

In our solar system, we have two types of planets. Small, warm, rocky worlds populate the inner region, while the outer region has cold gas giants. Intuitively this makes a lot of sense. When the solar system was forming, the Sun’s light and heat must have pushed much of the gas toward the outer system, leaving heavier dust and rock to form the inner worlds. Giants could only grow in the cold, dark outer solar system. But we now know our solar system is more the exception than the rule. Many star systems have large gas planets that orbit close to their stars. These hot Jupiters and hot Neptunes are unlike anything in our solar system, and astronomers are keen to understand what they may be like.

June 15, 2022June 15, 2022 by Evan Gough

How Do Hot Jupiters Get So Close to Their Stars?

An illustration of a Hot Jupiter orbiting close to its star. Image Credit: ESA/ATG medialab, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

In this age of exoplanet discovery, we’ve discovered thousands of exoplanets of different types. The hot Jupiter is one of the most unusual types. There’s nothing like it in our Solar System.

Hot Jupiters are massive gas planets, and they attract a lot of attention because they’re so close to their stars and reach blistering temperatures. Their existence spawns a lot of questions about their formation and evolution. A new study is trying to answer some of those questions by determining hot Jupiters’ ages.

April 6, 2022April 6, 2022 by Evan Gough

Digging Through Kepler Data Turns Up a Near Twin of Jupiter

The exoplanet, K2-2016-BLG-0005Lb, is almost identical to Jupiter in terms of its mass and its distance from its sun was discovered using data obtained in 2016 by NASA's Kepler space telescope. The exoplanetary system is twice as distant as any seen previously by Kepler, which found over 2,700 confirmed planets before ceasing operations in 2018. Image Credit: Specht et al. 2022.

NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft was deactivated in November 2018, about ten years after it launched. The mission detected over 5,000 candidate exoplanets and 2,662 confirmed exoplanets using the transit method. But scientists are still working with all of Kepler’s data, hoping to uncover more planets in the observations.

A team of researchers have announced the discovery of one more planet in the Kepler data, and this one is nearly a twin of Jupiter.

April 5, 2022April 5, 2022 by Evan Gough

Hubble Has Been Watching This Planet Form for 13 Years

Researchers were able to directly image newly forming exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a 13-year span using Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and its Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS). In the top right, Hubble’s NICMOS image captured in 2007 shows AB Aurigae b in a due south position compared to its host star, which is covered by the instrument’s coronagraph. The image captured in 2021 by STIS shows the protoplanet has moved in a counterclockwise motion over time. Credits: Science: NASA, ESA, Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.); Image Processing: Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Hubble’s most remarkable feature might be its longevity. The Hubble has been operating for almost 32 years and has fed us a consistent diet of science—and eye candy—during that time. For 13 of its 32 years, it’s been checking in on a protoplanet forming in a young solar system about 530 light-years away.

Planet formation is always a messy process. But in this case, the planet’s formation is an “intense and violent process,” according to the authors of a new study.