Monday, 2 July 2018

First image of a newborn planet forming

The ESO's Very Large Telescope captured the first image of a planet forming in the swooshy swirl of space dust surrounding a similarly youthful star. The planet is the blurry yellow blob to the bottom right of center; the black blob in the middle is a blinker used to block direct light from the star, which would otherwise overwhelm the sensor.

It is located roughly three billion kilometres from the central star, roughly equivalent to the distance between Uranus and the Sun. The analysis shows that PDS 70b is a giant gas planet with a mass a few times that of Jupiter. The planet's surface has a temperature of around 1000°C, making it much hotter than any planet in our own Solar System.

Sounds like a great place to visit! Here's video with some more explanations and some artistic renderings of the solar system and the world itself.

https://youtu.be/JYCKQWEOywY