Planetary Formation Archives

August 6, 2020August 6, 2020 by Evan Gough

A Strange Planet has been Found that’s Smaller than Neptune But 50% More Massive

An artist's impression of K2-25b orbiting its host star, and M-dwarf in the Hyades cluster. Image Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. Pollard

Astronomers have found another strange exoplanet in a distant solar system. This one’s an oddball because its size is intermediate between Earth and Neptune, yet it’s 50% more massive than Neptune.

Astronomers have found what they call “puff planets” in other Solar Systems. Those are planets that are a few times more massive than Earth, but with radii much larger than Neptune’s. But this planet is the opposite of that: it’s much more massive than Neptune, but it also has a much smaller radius. Super-dense, not super-puffy.

This oddball planet is calling into question our understanding of how planets form.

July 29, 2020July 29, 2020 by Evan Gough

A Group of Meteorites All Came From a Destroyed Planetesimal With a Magnetic Core

Samples from a rare meteorite family, including the one shown here, reveal that their parent planetesimal, formed in the earliest stages of the solar system, was a complex, layered object, with a molten core and solid crust similar to Earth. Photo credit: Carl Agee, Institute of Meteoritics, University of New Mexico. Background edited by MIT News.

Before our Solar System had planets, it had planetesimals. Scientists think that most of the meteorites that have struck Earth are fragments of these planetesimals. Scientists also think that these planetesimals either melted completely, very early in their history, or that they remained as little more than collections of rocks, or “rubble piles.”

But one family of meteorites, that have been found spread around the world, appear to come from a planetesimal that bucked that trend.

July 16, 2020 by Andy Tomaswick

More Details On NASA’s VERITAS Mission, Which Could Go to Venus

Venus has always been a bit of the odd stepchild in the solar system. It’s similarities to Earth are uncanny: roughly the same size, mass, and distance from the sun. But the development paths the two planets ended up taking were very different, with one being the birthplace of all life as we know it, and the other becoming a cloud-covered, highly pressurized version of hell. That cloud cover, which is partially made up of sulfuric acid, has also given the planet an air of mystery. So much so that astronomers in the early 20th century speculated that there could be dinosaurs roaming about on the surface.

Some of that mystery will melt away if a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory gets a chance to launch their newest idea for a mission to the planet, the Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topograph, and Spectroscopy (or VERITAS) mission.

June 23, 2020June 23, 2020 by Evan Gough

Pluto and Other Kuiper Belt Objects Started Out With Water Oceans, and Have Been Slowly Freezing Solid for Billions of Years

Far left: Pluto and it's heart-shaped feature called “Tombaugh Regio” in honor of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the dwarf planet. The bright expanse of the western lobe of Pluto’s “heart” is informally called Sputnik Planum. Above left: Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of landforms that have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story. Credit: Courtesy NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Table of Contents page 2015 Annual Report Division: (15)

It seems unlikely that an ocean could persist on a world that never gets closer than 30 astronomical units from the Sun. But that’s the case with Pluto. Evidence shows that it has a sub-surface ocean between 100 to 180 km thick, at the boundary between the core and the mantle. Other Kuiper Belt Objects may be similar.

But time might be running out for these buried oceans, which will one day turn to ice.

June 23, 2020June 23, 2020 by Evan Gough

Planets Form in Just a Few Hundred Thousand Years

Artist's conceptualization of the dusty TYC 8241 2652 system as it might have appeared several years ago when it was emitting large amounts of excess infrared radiation. Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA artwork by Lynette Cook. https://www.gemini.edu/node/11836

Astronomers like to observe young planets forming in circumstellar debris disks, the rotating rings of material around young stars. But when they measure the amount of material in those disks, they don’t contain enough material to form large planets. That discrepancy has puzzled astronomers.

The answer might come down to timing.

A new study suggests that planets form much quicker than astronomers think.

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020 by Evan Gough

Space Dust Delivered Water to Vesta, Could it Have Done the Same for Earth?

An artful image of dwarf planet Vesta, with an image of micrometeorite overlaid. Image Credit: Ogliore Lab

One of the most enduring questions about Earth regards the origins of its water. Where did it come from? One widely-held theory gives comets the honor of bringing water to Earth. Another one says that Earth’s water came when a protoplanet crashed into early Earth, not only delivering a vast quantity of water, but creating the Moon.

Now a new study shows that the minor planet Vesta got its water from space dust. Could that help explain the origin of Earth’s water?

June 1, 2020June 1, 2020 by Evan Gough

Huge Stars Can Destroy Nearby Planetary Disks

The brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life resembles a glittering fireworks display in this Hubble Space Telescope image. The sparkling centerpiece of this fireworks show is a giant cluster of thousands of stars called Westerlund 2. The cluster resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 pierced through the dusty veil shrouding the stellar nursery in near-infrared light, giving astronomers a clear view of the nebula and the dense concentration of stars in the central cluster. The cluster measures between six light-years and 13 light-years across. Credits: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI) and the Westerlund 2 Science Team

Westerlund 2 is a star cluster about 20,000 light years away. It’s young—only about one or two million years old—and its core contains some of the brightest and hottest stars we know of. Also some of the most massive ones.

There’s something unusual going on around the massive hot stars at the heart of Westerlund 2. There should be huge, churning clouds of gas and dust around those stars, and their neighbours, in the form of circumstellar disks.

But in Westerlund 2’s case, some of the stars have no disks.

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020 by Evan Gough

This is an Actual Image of a Planet-Forming Disc in a Distant Star System

An image of AB Aurigae from the ESO's VLT and its SPHERE instrument, showing what scientists think is a baby planet forming. Image Credit: ESO/Boccaletti et al.

In 2017, astronomers used ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array) to look at the star AB Aurigae. It’s a type of young star called a Herbig Ae star, and it’s less then 10 million years old. At that time, they found a dusty protoplanetary disk there, with tell-tale gaps indicating spiral arms.

Now they’ve taken another look, and found a very young planet forming there.

May 21, 2020May 21, 2020 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Are Sure These Are Two Newborn Planets Orbiting a Distant Star

An artist's illustration of the PDS 70 system, not to scale. The two planets are clearing a gap in the circumstellar disk as they form. As they accrete in-falling material, the heat makes them glow. Image Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

Planet formation is a notoriously difficult thing to observe. Nascent planets are ensconced inside dusty wombs that resist our best observation efforts. But recently, astronomers have made progress in imaging these planetary newborns.

A new study presents the first-ever direct images of twin baby planets forming around their star.

May 7, 2020May 7, 2020 by Evan Gough

More Pictures of Planet-Forming Disks Around Young Stars

The fifteen images of protoplanetary disks, captured with ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer. CREDIT Jacques Kluska et al.

Astronomy is advancing to the point where we can see planets forming around young stars. This was an unthinkable development only a few years ago. In fact, it was only two years ago that astronomers captured the first image of a newly-forming planet.

Now there are more and more studies into how planets form, including a new one with fifteen images of planet-forming disks around young stars.