Scientists were able to straight image freshly forming exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a 13-year period using Hubbles Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and its Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS). Credit: Science: NASA, ESA, Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.); Image Processing: Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.), Alyssa Pagan (STScI).
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has directly photographed proof of a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through what scientists refer to as an “violent and extreme procedure.” This discovery supports a long-debated theory for how planets like Jupiter form, called “disk instability.”.
The brand-new world under construction is embedded in a protoplanetary disk of dust and gas with unique spiral structure swirling around surrounding a young star thats approximated to be around 2 million years of ages. When world development was underway, thats about the age of our solar system. (The planetary systems age is currently 4.6 billion years.).
Researchers were able to straight image freshly forming exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a 13-year span using the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and its Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS).
In the top right, Hubbles NICMOS image recorded in 2007 programs AB Aurigae b in a due south position compared to its host star, which is covered by the instruments coronagraph. The image captured in 2021 by STIS reveals the protoplanet has actually relocated a counterclockwise movement with time.
For more on this discovery, see Hubble Finds a Massive Planet– 9 Times the Size of Jupiter– Forming Through a Violent Process.
Referral: “Images of ingrained Jovian world development at a wide separation around AB Aurigae” by Thayne Currie, Kellen Lawson, Glenn Schneider, Wladimir Lyra, John Wisniewski, Carol Grady, Olivier Guyon, Motohide Tamura, Takayuki Kotani, Hajime Kawahara, Timothy Brandt, Taichi Uyama, Takayuki Muto, Ruobing Dong, Tomoyuki Kudo, Jun Hashimoto, Misato Fukagawa, Kevin Wagner, Julien Lozi, Jeffrey Chilcote, Taylor Tobin, Tyler Groff, Kimberly Ward-Duong, William Januszewski, Barnaby Norris, Peter Tuthill, Nienke van der Marel, Michael Sitko, Vincent Deo, Sebastien Vievard, Nemanja Jovanovic, Frantz Martinache and Nour Skaf, 4 April 2022, Nature Astronomy.DOI: 10.1038/ s41550-022-01634-x.