How the solar system was born: Incredible images capture planetary bodies in the act of being sculpted from dust, rock and ice
- Astronomers captured changes to discs of gas and dust as planets form
- Planet-forming discs around young stars show an array of shapes and sizes
- Observations revealed how the material is moulded into new planets
- But the juvenile planets change the shape and distribution of the disc material, creating spirals, Saturn-like rings and huge yawning gulfs
Beyond Earth is stable solar system of rocky inner worlds, churning gas giants and planetary ice cubes at the fringes.
But exactly how planetary systems evolve from a chaotic swirling disc of building blocks to well behaved spheres remains unclear.
Now stunning new images captured from distant young stars shows these protoplanetary discs are sculpted into juvenile planets, which researchers say could deepen our knowledge of planetary formation.
Astronomers have captured images from young stars showing how their surrounding discs of dust and gas are sculpted into juvenile planets. Gargantuan Saturn-like rings were found around RX J1615 (pictured), in the Scorpius constellation, 600 light years from Earth
As the elements in the core of a new star fuse and it bursts into life, huge discs of gas and dust swirl about them.
Just like star formation, this material develops in clumps – colliding, growing and condensing until they form planets.
These protoplanetary discs can be unimaginably huge, reaching out across billions of kilometres.
By tracking three young stars, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have captured new images of these discs at different stages of their evolution.
HD 135344B, is surrounded by a multi-armed protoplanetary disc with a large central void – a black gulf stretching 25 times the distance from the Earth to the sun – and two huge swirling arms (pictured)
Using observational data captured by the Sphere instrument, at the Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert, a team has been able to analyse the fine details of these discs, showing how the emerging planets cause them to change shape.
One group images the star in the Scorpius constellation, 600 light years from Earth.
Led by Jos de Boer at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, astronomers found a series of gargantuan Saturn-like rings around star RX J1615.
What’s more, the system is a baby by planetary standards, at just 1.8 million years old, with the forming planets shaping the disc.
Commenting on how the outermost rings may have been snipped during the planet-forming process, the researchers explain: 'Besides the option of the disk being truncated by a single massive planet ... multiple lower mass planets can provide a similar truncation of the disk.'
A second star, HD 97048, found in the Chamaeleon constellation 500 light-years away, has similar concentric rings, making young systems with these regular symmetrical rings far more common than previously thought.
Describing HD 97048's ring, Christian Ginski of the University of Leiden, wrote: 'We find that nascent planets are one possible explanation for the structures that we are observing.'
Previous images of these young systems had shown discs forming spiral arms, vortices or empty voids.
A second star, HD 97048 (pictured), found in the Chamaeleon constellation 500 light-years away, has similar concentric rings, making young systems with these regular symmetrical rings far more common than previously thought.
A second team in the Netherlands found a striking example of these spiral arm discs, 450 light-years from Earth.
The star, called HD 135344B, is surrounded by a multi-armed protoplanetary disc with a large central void – a black gulf stretching 25 times the distance from the Earth to the sun – and two huge swirling arms.
They believe to be the result of huge protoplanets forming, tugging at the shape and accreting matter as they orbit.
Tomas Stolker, an astronomer from the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy in the Netherlands, and who led the HD 135344B-group, wrote: 'The spiral arms are best explained by two protoplanets orbiting exterior of the spiral arms.
'Protoplanet solutions inside the scattered light cavity seem unlikely because the spiral arm pitch angles would require unphysical disk temperatures.'
In one stunning example of seeing planets form in 'real time', astronomers observed changes in the protoplanetary disc of one young star over a period of months.
Four dark streaks were seen around HD 135344B, one of which changed between two observations, hinting the disc of free material is being moulded into growing juvenile planets.
The images have helped astronomers to explain how the shape of the rings can be changed by the juvenile planets as they form from the mas of swirling material. Pictured are HD 97048, HD 135344B and RX J1615
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