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Astronomy Breakthroughs: Striking New Image of Dusty Clumps – ‘No One Had Ever Seen’ – Reveals Giant Planets Formation Secrets

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New Evidence in Planet Formation: This discovery “marks the very first detection of clumps around a young star that have the potential to give rise to giant planets.”

A stunning new image published today by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) offers intriguing hints about how massive planets like Jupiter planets form.

What secrets does the new image of planet formation reveal?

The image, captured using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), reveals significant dusty clusters near a young star that could potentially condense into giant planets.

“This discovery is truly captivating,” describes Alice Zurlo, a researcher involved in the observations at the Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, “as it marks the very first detection of clumps around a young star that have the potential to give rise to giant planets.”

The study draws from a captivating image acquired with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) tool attached to ESO’s VLT.

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This image illuminates intriguing specifics of the materials around the star V960 Mon.

Located in the Monoceros constellation, over 5000 light-years away, this fledgling star grabbed the attention of astronomers when it amplified its luminosity more than twenty-fold in 2014. SPHERE’s observations, taken right after this luminosity explosion, disclosed that the matter circling V960 Mon is coalescing into complex spirals stretching over areas larger than our entire Solar System.

This revelation spurred astronomers to revisit archived observations of the same system collected with ALMA, a partner of ESO. While the VLT observations investigate the surface of the dust-laden material around the star, ALMA delves deeper into its composition.

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Zurlo explains, “With ALMA, it became apparent that the spiral arms are undergoing fragmentation, resulting in the formation of clumps with masses akin to those of planets.”

Dusty Clumps May Herald the Birth of Jupiter-sized Planets

The scientific community theorizes that giant planets originate either from ‘core accretion’, where dust particles merge, or through ‘gravitational instability’, where extensive fragments of star-surrounding matter contract and collapse.

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Evidence supporting the latter has been rare until now, with Philipp Weber, a researcher at the University of Santiago, Chile, noting that, “No one had ever seen a real observation of gravitational instability happening at planetary scales — until now.”

Weber led the study, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters today.

Sebastián Pérez, a team member from the University of Santiago, Chile, adds, “Our group has been searching for signs of how planets form for over ten years, and we couldn’t be more thrilled about this incredible discovery.”

Source: 10.3847/2041-8213/ace186

Image Credit: ESO

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