Astronomers directly observed the birth of a "planet" for the first time, and it's only 520 light-years away from us!

【Mobile software: Bo Ke Yuan】

Observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) revealed signs of the birth of a star system. Surrounding the young star AB Aurigae is a dense disk of dust and gas (protoplanetary disk), in which astronomers discovered a prominent spiral structure with a "twist" that marks where planets may be forming. This observed feature is the first direct evidence of the existence of a newborn planet. Antoine Boccaletti of the Paris Observatory of PSL University in France, who led the study, said:

Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered so far, but little is known about how they form. Planets are born in dusty disks around young stars, such as AB Aurigae, as cold gas and dust clump together. New observations with the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, provide key clues to help scientists better understand this process. Studies need to observe very young systems to actually capture the moment of planet formation.

But until now, astronomers have been unable to take images of these young protoplanetary disks clearly and deeply enough to find the "warps" that mark where a newborn planet might be about to live. The new images show stunning spirals of dust and gas surrounding AB Aurigae, a star system 520 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Auriga. This type of spiral marks the presence of young planets, which "kick" the gas and create "perturbations" in the disk in the form of waves, a bit like the wake of a boat on a lake," explained Emmanuel Di Folco of the Laboratory of Astrophysics (LAB) in Bordeaux, France.

Such waves form spiral arms as planets orbit their central stars. The very bright yellow "warp" area near the center of the new AB Aurigae image, at about the same distance as Neptune from the Sun, is one of the sites of disturbances where the team believes planets are forming. Observations of the AB Aurigae system made several years ago with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory is a partner, provided the first clues that planet formation was taking place around the star. In the ALMA image, the scientists spotted two spiral arms of gas close to the star, located in the inner region of the disk.

The team of astronomers then began to capture clearer pictures by pointing the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile toward the star, creating the deepest and clearest images of the AB Aurigae system ever obtained. With SPHERE's powerful imaging system, astronomers could see the faint light from tiny dust grains and radiation from the inner disk. The presence of the spiral arms first detected by ALMA was confirmed, and another notable feature, a "warp," was discovered, which indicates the presence of planets forming in the disk.

Some theoretical models of planet formation predict the presence of twists, which correspond to the junction of two spirals - one winding inwards within the planet's orbit, and the other extending outwards - connecting at the planet's location. They allow gas and dust from the disk to cling to the forming planet and cause it to "grow". Using cutting-edge technology from ALMA and SPERE to study worlds outside our solar system, these powerful telescopes will enable astronomers to obtain a more detailed view of forming planets, and should be able to see more directly and with greater precision how gas dynamics contribute to planet formation.

Bo Ke Yuan | Research/From: European Southern Observatory

The study was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics

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