An international astronomer team has discovered a planet at an early stage of training around a young star similar to the sun. Scientists believe that the exoplanet has about 5 million years and that it is a giant gaseous of similar size to Jupiter.
The finding, published on Tuesday in Astrophysical Journal Letters, was conducted by researchers from Leiden universities (Netherlands), Galway (Ireland) and Arizona (United States).
The discovery was possible thanks to the VLT telescope of the European Observatory Austral (ESO), one of the most advanced in the world located in the Atacama desert, in Chile.
The new planet has been baptized Wispit 2B.
Christian Ginski, second author of the study and researcher at the University of Galway, explained that when observing this young star with the VLT they detected “a multi -rings dust album completely unexpected and exceptionally beautiful.”
“When we saw this album with multiple rings for the first time, we knew that we had to try to see if we could detect a planet inside it, so we quickly requested follow -up observations.”
This is the second time that a planet is discovered at this early evolutionary stage around a young version of our Sun, the first took place in 2018 by a research team of which Ginski was also part of.
Wispit 2B is also the first unequivocal detection of a planet on an album with multiple rings, which makes it the ideal laboratory to study the planet-Disco interaction and subsequent evolution.
A study opportunity
The planet was captured in nearby infrared light (such as using night vision glasses) since it is still shining and hot after its initial formation phase.
The team captured a clear and spectacular image of the young protoplanet embedded in a hole of the album and confirmed that the planet orbit its host star.
They also discovered that the planet is still actively accumulating gas while forming its atmosphere.
The rich dust and gas discs around young stars are the birth cribs of the planets. The one that surrounds Wispit 2B has a radius of 380 astronomical units, approximately 380 times the distance between the earth and the sun.
“Capture an image of these planets in formation has been extremely challenging and gives us a true opportunity to understand why the many thousands of older exoplanet systems that exist out there look so diverse and so different from our own solar system,” says Ginski.
For Chloe Lawlor, astrophysics at the University of Galway and co -author of the study, “Wispit 2B, with her position within her birth disc, is a beautiful example of a planet that can be used to explore the current planetary training models.”
“I am sure that this will become a reference article,” he says.