 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| . |  |
. |
 by Staff Writers Washington DC (SPX) Jun 22, 2018
New work from an international team of astronomers including Carnegie's Jaehan Bae used archival radio telescope data to develop a new method for finding very young extrasolar planets. Their technique successfully confirmed the existence of two previously predicted Jupiter-mass planets around the star HD 163296. Their work is published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Of the thousands of exoplanets discovered by astronomers, only a handful are in their formative years. Finding more baby planets will help astronomers answer the many outstanding questions about planet formation, including the process by which our own solar system came into existence. Young stars are surrounded by rotating disks of gas and dust from which planets are formed. The 60 radio telescope antennae of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, ALMA, have been able to image these disks with never-before-seen clarity. The research team - including lead author Richard Teague and co-author Edwin Bergin of the University of Michigan, Tilman Birnstiel of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and Daniel Foreman-Mackey of the Flatiron Institute - used archival ALMA data to demonstrate that anomalies in the velocity of the gas in these rotating protoplanetary disks can be used to indicate the presence of giant planets. Other techniques for finding baby planets in the disks surrounding young stars are based on observations of the emission coming from a disk's dust particles. But dust only accounts for 1% of a disk's mass, so the team decided to focus instead on the gas that comprises 99% of a young disk. Their new technique focuses on the motion of the gas, probing radial pressure gradients in the gas to see the shape of the perturbations - like swirls and eddies in a rocky streambed - allowing astronomers to make a more precise determination of the masses and locations of any planets embedded in the disk. Their new method successfully confirmed the previously predicted existence of two Jupiter-mass planets around HD 163296. They orbit at distances of 83 and 137 times that between the Sun and the Earth, although their host star is much brighter than our own Sun. "Although dust plays an important role in planet formation and provides us invaluable information, it is the gas that accounts for 99% of protoplanetary disks' mass. It is therefore crucial to study kinematics, or motion, of the gas to better understand what is happening in the disks we observe," explained Bae. "This method will provide essential evidence to help interpret the high-resolution dust images coming from ALMA. Also, by detecting planets at this young stage we have the best opportunity yet to test how their atmospheres are formed and what molecules are delivered in this process," said lead author Teague.
Research Report: "A Kinematical Detection of Two Embedded Jupiter Mass Planets in HD 163296," R. Teague et al., 2018, to appear in Astrophysical Journal Letters
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
| The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us. |
del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Google
