Young planet in formation spotted near dwarf star

Berlin: In a first, scientists have captured a spectacular image of a planet in the process of formation - cleaving a path through the cosmic material around a young dwarf star.

By using the SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) - one of the most powerful planet-hunting instruments - astronomers led by a team at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany made the first robust detection of the young planet, named PDS 70b.

The SPHERE instrument also enabled the team to measure the brightness of the planet at different wavelengths, which allowed properties of its atmosphere to be deduced.

The planet stands out very clearly in the new observations, visible as a bright point to the right of the blackened centre of the image. It is located roughly three billion kilometres from the central star, roughly equivalent to the distance between Uranus and the Sun. The analysis shows that PDS 70b is a giant gas planet with a mass a few times that of Jupiter. The planet's surface has a temperature of around 1,000 degrees Celsius, making it much hotter than any planet in our own solar system.

The dark region at the centre of the image is due to a coronagraph, a mask which blocks the blinding light of the central star and allows astronomers to detect its much fainter disc and planetary companion.

Without this mask, the faint light from the planet would be utterly overwhelmed by the intense brightness of PDS 70.

"These discs around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of observations have detected hints of baby planets in them," said Miriam Keppler, who led the team behind the discovery of PDS 70's still-forming

planet.