In a series of studies, a team of astronomers has shed new light on the complex process of planetary formation. These extraordinary images, captured by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, represent one of the largest-ever surveys of planet-forming disks. The research work brings together observations of more than 80 young stars that may have planets forming around them, providing astronomers with a huge amount of unique data and knowledge about how planets form in different regions of our Galaxy.
“This really is a change in our area of study”says Christian Ginski, professor at the University of Galway, Ireland, and main author of one of the three new scientific articles published today in the specialty journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. “We’ve gone from in-depth study of individual star systems to this huge overview of entire star-forming regions.”
To date, more than 5,000 planets have been discovered orbiting stars other than the Sun, often in systems very different from our own Solar System. To understand where and how this diversity arises, astronomers must look at the dust- and gas-rich disks surrounding young stars — the cradles of planetary formation. These disks are most easily found in the enormous gas clouds where the stars themselves are forming.
Like already developed planetary systems, the new images show the extraordinary diversity of planet-forming disks. “Some of these disks feature enormous spiral arms, presumably driven by the intricate ballet of orbiting planets.,” says Ginski. “Others show rings and large cavities carved by the forming planets, while still others appear soft and almost asleep amidst all this bustle of activity.“, adds Antonio Garufi, astronomer at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), and main author of one of the articles.
The team studied a total of 86 stars in three different star-forming regions of our Galaxy: Taurus and Chameleon I, both about 600 light-years away from Earth, and Orion, a gas-rich cloud about 1,600 years away. -light from us, which is known to be the birthplace of several stars more massive than the Sun. The observations were collected by a huge international team, made up of scientists from more than 10 countries.
The team was able to draw several important conclusions from the data set obtained. For example, in Orion it was found that stars grouped into two or more were less likely to have large planet-forming disks. This is a significant result given that, unlike our Sun, most stars in our Galaxy have companions. Furthermore, the irregular appearance of the disks in this region suggests the possibility of massive planets existing within them, which could give rise to the deformation and misalignment that we observe in these disks.
Although planet-forming disks can extend over distances hundreds of times greater than the distance between the Earth and the Sun, their location several hundred light-years away makes them appear to us as small dots in the night sky. To observe the discs, the team used the instrument SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch) instalado no VLT from ESO The system of adaptive optics The latest generation of SPHERE corrects the effects of turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere, giving us very clear images of the disks. In this way, the team was able to image disks around stars with masses as low as half the mass of the Sun, which are typically too faint for most other currently available instruments. Additional data were also obtained for this study with the instrument X-shooter of the VLT, which allowed astronomers to determine the age and mass of the stars. In turn, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), of which ESO is a partner, helped the team better understand the amount of dust surrounding some of the stars.
As technology advances, the team hopes to peer even deeper into the core of planet-forming systems. The enormous 39-meter mirror of the future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) from ESO, for example, will allow the team to study the innermost regions around young stars, where rocky planets like ours could be forming.
For now, these revolutionary images provide researchers with a huge amount of data that will help unlock the mysteries of planetary formation. “It is almost poetic that the processes that mark the beginning of the formation of planets and, ultimately, life, as happened in our own Solar System, are so beautiful“, concludes Per-Gunnar Valegård, a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, who led the study of the Orion region. Valegård, who is also a part-time teacher at the International School of Hilversum in the Netherlands, hopes the images will inspire his students to become scientists in the future.
European Southern Observatory
2024-03-06 12:22:44
#Tracking #reveals #secrets #birth #planets #dozens #stars #Champion #Provinces
