Stunning Images from Very Large Telescope Provide Unique Insights into Planet Formation
In a groundbreaking discovery, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile has captured stunning images that provide unique insights into planet formation around young stars. These images showcase emerging planet systems that resemble miniature galaxies rather than the expected disks of debris. Astronomers are thrilled by this unexpected revelation as it presents a rare opportunity to study the birth of planets. The collection of images, captured by one of the world’s most powerful telescopes, is one of the largest of its kind, featuring over 80 young stars and their planet-forming disks.
“This is really a shift in our field of study,” says Christian Ginski, a lecturer at the University of Galway in Ireland and lead author of three papers detailing the observations. “We’ve gone from the intense study of individual star systems to this huge overview of entire star-forming regions.”
The young stars and their fledgling planets come from three major star-forming regions within the Milky Way galaxy. Some reside in the Taurus or Chameleon I gas clouds, both located approximately 600 light-years away from Earth, while others originate from the more distant Orion gas cloud, about 1,600 light-years away. The researchers have discovered a wide variety of planet-forming disks that exhibit significant differences based on their respective origins. In the Orion cloud, for instance, astronomers observed groups of two or more stars surrounded by faint planet-forming disks. Interestingly, some of the most massive stars in this region possess oddly shaped disks, indicating the presence of very large planets that distort their disks due to their immense gravitational pulls.
“Some of these disks show huge spiral arms, presumably driven by the intricate ballet of orbiting planets,” explains Ginski.
The images also reveal other intriguing features such as rings, large cavities, and smooth, seemingly inactive disks. These characteristics suggest that forming planets may be responsible for carving out cavities and creating rings within the disks.
Since the 1990s, telescopes in space and on Earth have discovered over 5,000 exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than our sun. However, many of these planetary systems differ significantly from our own solar system, leaving astronomers eager to understand the factors that influence planet formation. Observing these processes is challenging due to the distance and dust obscuring the regions where stars form.
To capture these groundbreaking images, astronomers utilized the VLT’s Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research instrument (SPHERE). Equipped with a powerful adaptive optics system, SPHERE corrects for blurring caused by Earth’s atmosphere, resulting in sharper images. This technology allowed researchers to image stars half the mass of the sun, a feat that most other instruments cannot achieve. Additional observations using the VLT’s spectrograph X-shooter and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array provided valuable information about the mass of the stars hosting the imaged planets and the amount of surrounding dust.
Looking ahead, the researchers are hopeful that the new Extremely Large Telescope, set to come online in Chile in the future, will provide even more detailed images. With this advanced technology, they may even be able to detect small, rocky planets within the inner regions of emerging planetary systems.
The findings from these groundbreaking observations were published in three papers in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on March 5th. This remarkable discovery marks a significant milestone in our understanding of planet formation and paves the way for further exploration into the mysteries of our universe.