Astronomers confirm presence of third protoplanet about 374 light years away
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Astronomers have caught a rare glimpse of a planet’s formation. This is only the third time scientists have discovered a protoplanet — an early stage in forming a planet, where cosmic material clumps in a disk surrounding newborn stars.
The protoplanet surrounded HD 169142, a star located 374 light years from our solar system. PDS 70 b and c are the other two recorded protoplanets, which orbit the star PDS 70.
The observation of new protoplanet
Between 2015 and 2019, scientists spotted this newly forming system several times. And based on their preliminary observations, they hypothesized that the compact source depicted in their images could be a potential protoplanet. They carried out extensive follow-up observations to confirm the formation of a planet. And the words confirmed their theory.
The team tracked the planet's movement at 37 astronomical units from its star.
"As we expect planets to be hot when they form, the telescope took infrared images of HD 169142 to look for the thermal signature of their formation. With these data, we were able to confirm the presence of a planet, HD 169142 b, about 37 AU (37 astronomical units, or 37 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun) from its star—slightly further than the orbit of Neptune,” said Iain Hammond, who was part of this study, in a statement.
Moreover, the observations also confirm the annular gap in the disk carved by the protoplanet, as predicted by the planetary models. This suggests that other protoplanetary disks with spiral-like rings may also hide planets in the universe.
"In the infrared, we can also see a spiral arm in the disk, caused by the planet and visible in its wake, suggesting that other protoplanetary disks containing spirals may also harbor yet undiscovered planets," said Hammond.
The observation of this new protoplanet was made possible by the Sphere instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory. Additionally, the authors used advanced image processing tools developed by the PSILab to better understand the phenomenon after observing it with the SPHERE instrument.
The study is conducted by an international team of researchers led by researchers from the University of Liège in Belgium. They have published their findings in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.
Study abstract:
We present the re-detection of a compact source in the face-on protoplanetary disc surrounding HD 169142, using VLT/SPHERE data in YJH bands. The source is found at a separation of 0′′.319 (∼37 au) from the star. Three lines of evidence argue in favor of the signal tracing a protoplanet: (i) it is found in the annular gap separating the two bright rings of the disc, as predicted by theory; (ii) it is moving at the expected Keplerian velocity for an object at ∼37 au in 2015, 2017, and 2019 data sets; and (iii) we also detect a spiral-shaped signal whose morphology is consistent with the expected outer spiral wake triggered by a planet in the gap, based on dedicated hydrodynamical simulations of the system. The YJH colors we extracted for the object are consistent with tracing scattered starlight, suggesting that the protoplanet is enshrouded in a significant amount of dust, as expected for a circumplanetary disc or envelope surrounding a gap-clearing Jovian-mass protoplanet.
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