Alma (eso / naoj / nrao) / m. McClure et al.
Hops-315, a baby star who showed evidence of the first phases of planetary training
International investigators identified, for the first time, the moment when planets began to form around a star other than the sun.
With the help of the soul, of which ESO is a partner, and the James Webb space telescope, astronomers observed the creation of the first nodules of planetary formation: hot minerals that begin to solidify.
This discovery marks first time a planetary system has been identified at such an early phase of its formation, while opening a window to the past of our own solar system.
“We identified, for the first time, the earliest moment when the formation of a planet begins around a star other than our sun,” says Melissa McClure, a professor at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, and the main author of the new journal published in the journal Nature.
Co -author Merel Van ‘T Hoff, professor at the University of Purdue, USA, the discovery of “one Solar Bebé System Photography“Saying that” we are seeing a system that looks like our solar system when it began to form. “
This newborn planetary system is emerging around HOPS-315, A protestal at about 1300 light years away from Earth and is an analogous of our baby sun. Astronomers often observe around these stars babies gas and dust discs, the so -called “protoplanetary discs”, which are the places where new planets form. Although previously observed young disks with newly graduated planets, massive and similar to Jupiter, McClure says that “we have always known that the first solid parts of the planets, or ‘plansimais’, have to form in previous phases.”
In our solar system, the first solid material to condense around the sun near the current location of the earth is meteorites old. Astronomers date these primordial rocks to determine when the formation of our solar system began. These meteorites are full of crystalline minerals that contain silicon monoxide (SI) and can condense to the extremely high temperatures present in young planetary discs. Over time, these newly covered solids come together, launching the seeds for planet formation as they gain size and mass. The first kilometers of the solar system, which grew and became planets such as Earth or Jupiter’s nucleus, formed soon after the condensation of these crystalline minerals.
With this new discovery, astronomers found evidence that these hot minerals begin to condense on the Hops-315 protoplanetary disk. The results show that Sio is present around this young star in his gaseous state, as well as inside these crystalline minerals, suggesting that he has now begun to solidify himself. “This process had never been previously observed on a protoplanetary disk, or anywhere else outside our solar system“Study co -author Edwin Bergin, professor at the University of Michigan, USA.
These minerals were first identified with the aid of James Webb space telescope, a joint project of the American, European and Canadian space agencies. To find out where the signs came from, the team observed the system with the Alma (Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array), which is operated by ESO together with international partners in the Atacama Chilean Desert.
With the data obtained, the researchers were able to determine that the chemical signals come from a small region of the disc around the star, equivalent to the orbit of the waist of asteroids around the sun. “We are indeed to see these minerals in a place of this extrasolar system corresponding to the place where we see them in the asteroids of our solar system,” says co-author Logan Francis, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leiden.
For this reason, the Hops-315 disc is a great analogous to study our own cosmic history. As Merel van ‘t hoff says, “this system is one of the best we know to really probe some of the processes that have happened in our solar system”, as well as offering astronomers a new opportunity to study early planetary training as it can be used as a substitute for galaxy newborn solar systems.
The astronoma of the ESO and soul manager in Europe, Elizabeth Humphreys, who did not participate in the study, comments: “I was very impressed by this study, which reveals a very early phase of planetary formation, suggesting that Hops-315 can be used to better understand how our own solar system has formed. This result highlights the combined power of JWST and the soul exploration.”
