New image gives clues about the birth of planets

A new image released by ESO reveals clues about a little-understood way in which massive planets as massive as Jupiter can form.

A combined VLT and ALMA image of the V960 Mons system. (ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Weber et al.)

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What looks like an unassuming celestial image released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) could give clues about how planets as massive as Jupiter can form. Astronomers detected large dusty clumps close to a young star that could collapse to create giant planets.

Researchers used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to look at the material around the star V960 Mon, which is located over 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. The star attracted astronomers’ attention when it increased its brightness more than twenty times in 2014.

Observations of the star taken shortly after its “brightness outburst” showed that the material orbiting it was arranged together in a series of intricate spiral arms extending over distances that are bigger than our entire Solar System.

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This discovery encouraged astronomers to analyse archive observations of the same system made with ALMA. The VLT observations probed the surface of the dusty material around the star while ALMA was used to look deeper into its structure.

There are two predominant theories that try to explain the formation of giant planets, according to ESO. One is that of “core accretion” where dust grains come together and coalesce. The other involves “gravitational instability,” where large clumps of material around a star contract and collapse. The first of these two scenarios has enough evidence to support it while evidence for the latter has been scant.

But this new discovery about V960 Mons, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters brings forward more evidence that will allow astronomers to study how gravitational instability contributes to the formation of massive planets.

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