Astronomers Spot Potential First Evidence of New Planet Being Born

Astronomers believe they may have found the first direct evidence of a new planet being born. A dense disc of dust and gas has been spotted surrounding a young star called AB Aurigae, about 520 light years away from Earth. From a report: Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT), located in Chile, the researchers observed a spiral structure with a "twist" near the centre, which suggests a new world may be in the process of forming. The swirling disc was one of the telltale signs of the star system being born in the constellation of Auriga, the scientists said. Dr Anthony Boccaletti, who led the study from the Observatoire de Paris at the PSL University, in France, said: "Thousands of exoplanets have been identified so far, but little is known about how they form." He added: "We need to observe very young systems to really capture the moment when planets form." Until now astronomers had been unable to take clear images of young discs to see these twists.

Extremely Large Telescope

[110010001000]

This one was detected using the Very Large Telescope. They are currently building another one called the "Extremely Large Telescope". No. I am not joking. Pretty amazing find.

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[XXongo]

They meant to call it TOUS, Telescope of Unusual Size.

Re: Extremely Large Telescope

[saloomy]

Just think of how this baby planet will look, 4.5 billion years from now

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[sconeu]

I don't think it exists...

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[PPH]

BFT?

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[Solandri]

The VLT [wikipedia.org] is an interferometer [eso.org] - 4 telescopes spaced a distance apart working together to act like a much larger telescope. You can think of it as creating a telescope with a mirror several hundred meters across, but then covering up all but four 8.2 meter diameter parts along the edge. You lose the light-gathering capability of the several-hundred-meter mirror, but you retain its resolving capability. So it's able to tease out much smaller details than you could from an individual 8.2 meter telescope. Th

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[DamnOregonian]

The ESO used the same methodology to create that black hole image - they used data from telescopes at the opposite sides of the planet, to create an interferometer with the resolving power of a telescope the diameter of the Earth.

What?
The radio telescopes of the EHT are spaced all over, owned by a dozen different entities.
The final processing of the VLBI data was done by the consortium, and not the ESO.

A dense disc of dust and gas...

[Kevoco]

...has been spotted surrounding a young star.

I thought Harvey Weinstein was in jail

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[penandpaper]

Can't identify the front hole.

Adorable

[Tablizer]

Awww, it's so cuuute!

Impatient

[mike2006]

Too bad we still are not hearing about finding habitable earth like planets and massive funding for research in folding space tech to get us there quickly without the time dilation issues.