Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

See planets being born in new images from the Very Large Telescope

By

Astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope to peer into the disks of matter from which exoplanets form, looking at more than 80 young stars to see which may have planets forming around them. This is the largest study to date on these planet-forming disks, which are often found within the same huge clouds of dust and gas that stars form within.

A total of 86 young stars were studied in three regions known to host star formation: Taurus and Chamaeleon I, each located around 600 light-years away, and Orion, a famous stellar nursery located around 1,600 light-years away. The researchers took images of the disks around the stars, looking at their structures for clues about how different types of planets can form.

The images shown here were captured using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). SPHERE’s state-of-the-art extreme adaptive optics system corrects for the turbulent effects of Earth’s atmosphere, yielding crisp images of the discs around stars. The stars themselves have been covered with a coronagraph — a circular mask that blocks their intense glare, revealing the faint discs around them.
The images shown here were captured using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). SPHERE’s state-of-the-art extreme adaptive optics system corrects for the turbulent effects of Earth’s atmosphere, yielding crisp images of the discs around stars. ESO/C. Ginski, A. Garufi, P.-G. Valegård et al.

“Some of these discs show huge spiral arms, presumably driven by the intricate ballet of orbiting planets,” said one of the researchers, Christian Ginski of the University of Galway, Ireland, in a statement. “Others show rings and large cavities carved out by forming planets, while yet others seem smooth and almost dormant among all this bustle of activity,” added another researcher, Antonio Garufi of the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).

Recommended Videos

The apparent clumpiness of some disks suggests that massive planets may already be forming within them. Some of the findings gave clues to how these planets develop: In Orion, for example, the researchers found that when there were two or more stars in a group, they were less likely to have a large planet-forming disk.

This composite image shows the MWC 758 planet-forming disc, located about 500 light-years away in the Taurus region, as seen with two different facilities. The yellow colour represents infrared observations obtained with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The blue regions on the other hand correspond to observations performed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).
This composite image shows the MWC 758 planet-forming disc, located about 500 light-years away in the Taurus region, as seen with two different facilities. The yellow color represents infrared observations obtained with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The blue regions, on the other hand, correspond to observations performed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ESO/A. Garufi et al.; R. Dong et al.; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

The researchers were able to see the disks using a combination of tools, such as the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument (SPHERE) and X-shooter instruments on the Very Large Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

Related

“This is really a shift in our field of study,” said Ginski. “We’ve gone from the intense study of individual star systems to this huge overview of entire star-forming regions.”

The research is published in three papers in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
See a new star being born in stunning James Webb image
The protostar L1527, shown in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of the birth of a new star. As dust and gas clump together and eventually collapses under the force of gravity, it becomes a protostar: the core of a new star, rotating and forming a magnetic field, throwing off material in two dramatic jets of gas.

This process is on display in this image of the cloud L1527, taken using Webb's NIRCam instrument. Looking in the infrared, this camera can capture the clouds of material given off by the protostar which would be invisible to the human eye.

Read more
See the dark pillar of the Cone Nebula captured by the Very Large Telescope
The Cone Nebula is part of a star-forming region of space, NGC 2264, about 2500 light-years away. Its pillar-like appearance is a perfect example of the shapes that can develop in giant clouds of cold molecular gas and dust, known for creating new stars. This dramatic new view of the nebula was captured with the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), and released on the occasion of ESO’s 60th anniversary.

A stunning image of a distant nebula has been taken using the Very Large Telescope. The Cone Nebula, located 2,700 light-years away in the constellation of Monoceros (the Unicorn), is huge in size at 7 light-years long. The Cone Nebula is next to the beautiful Christmas Tree cluster, also known as NGC 2264.

The image was shared by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in celebration of its formation 60 years ago. ESO operates ground-based telescopes in Chile including the Very Large Telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, and the New Technology Telescope.

Read more
The ghostly remnants of a dead star captured in stunning image
This image shows a spectacular view of the orange and pink clouds that make up what remains after the explosive death of a massive star — the Vela supernova remnant. This detailed image consists of 554 million pixels, and is a combined mosaic image of observations taken with the 268-million-pixel OmegaCAM camera at the VLT Survey Telescope, hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. OmegaCAM can take images through several filters that each let the telescope see the light emitted in a distinct colour. To capture this image, four filters have been used, represented here by a combination of magenta, blue, green and red. The result is an extremely detailed and stunning view of both the gaseous filaments in the remnant and the foreground bright blue stars that add sparkle to the image.

When a massive star runs out of fuel and comes to the end of its life, it can explode in an enormous and epic event called a supernova, which can be as bright as an entire galaxy. These explosions can obliterate anything around them, but they aren't simply destructive -- they can also create stunning structures called supernova remnants. These remnants are formed as shock waves from the explosion travel through nearby clouds of gas, sculpting them into beautiful shapes.

One such ghostly remnant has been captured by a ground-based instrument called OmegaCAM on the European Southern Observatory's VLT Survey Telescope.  The Vela supernova remnant is located 800 light-years away and was created by the death of a star around 11,000 years ago.

Read more