Space science does not only live on the James Web telescope. The European Space Agency has some of the most powerful telescopes in the world, and by coordinating two of them, they have achieved a new milestone: the capture of 86 stars giving birth to planets.
The first known exoplanet, that is, a planet outside the Solar System, was discovered in 1995, just 30 years ago. This is because exoplanets do not emit light like stars, and until recently telescopes could not see them.
Today we already know more than 5,000 exoplanets scattered throughout the universe., some of them with conditions similar to Earth. And it looks like we’re going to have to add a few more to the list…
Photos of stars giving birth to planets
We know very little about the formation of planets. In most cases, dust is generated near a very young star that rotates, like a disk, or a spiral. Over millions of years, that dust accumulates to form rocks and, eventually, a planet. But we hardly know anything about the processes that turn dust or gases into planets.
The work of a group of international scientists from more than ten countries promises to fill some of these gaps. They have coordinated the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)to capture 86 stars with planets in formation:
ESO/A.Garufi et al.; YOU WILL GO
On the left you can see some of these stars, and on the right, an enlarged image of one of them, where you can see the planet in formation, right in the center.
All of these stars are in three different regions of our galaxy. Two of them, Taurus and Chameleon I, are located about 600 light years from Earth. Orion, a gas-rich cloud, is 1,600 light years away from us. It is the birthplace of several stars more massive than the Sun.
“This is really a change in our field of study,” explains Christian Ginski, professor at the University of Galway (Ireland), in the ESA statement. “We’ve gone from intense study of individual star systems to this huge overview of entire star-forming regions.”
“Some of these disks show enormous spiral arms, presumably driven by the intricate ballet of orbiting planets,” says Ginski.
“Others show rings and large cavities excavated by planets in formation, while others appear smooth and almost inactive among all this bustle of activity,” adds Antonio Garufi, astronomer at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF).
The large ground and space telescopes, built in recent decades, and international scientific collaboration, are revolutionizing our knowledge of space. The spectacular photographs of young stars giving birth to planetscaptured by the ESA, are a good example.