An international team of astronomers captured rare images of planet-forming disks around young stars shape like music record. These disks of gas and dust are located hundreds of light-years away. The researchers took the fifteen images of the inner rims of planet-forming disks with the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) very large telescopes in Chile, which is providing insight into how planetary systems like earth are created.
This planet-forming or protoplanetary disks are formed in unison with the star they surround. Its dust grains grow into larger bodies eventually forming planets. Rocky planets like Earth are believed to form in the inner regions of protoplanetary disks, less than five astronomical units (five times Earth-Sun distance) from the star around which the disk has formed.
“Being able to observe these disks is comparable to seeing a hair ten kilometres away”
-says Jean-Philippe Berger-principle investigator of the work with the PIONIER (Precision Integrated-Optics Near-infrared Imaging ExpeRiment) instrument.
Researchers used a technique called infrared interferometry. Using ESO’s PIONIER instrument, they combined the light collected by four telescopes at the very large Telescope observatory to capture the disks in detail. They use advanced mathematical techniques to reconstruct the finer details of the disks by removing light of the star hindering their view some sections are brighter than others which points to the process leading to planet formation. So they want to do more research on these irregularities and hopefully witness planet forming. This technique is similar to how the first image of the black hole was captured.
Reference: KU LEUVEN NEWS
https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201833774
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