Astronomers watch birth of a new planet for the first time 520 light years away

ASTRONOMERS BELIEVE they may have found 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, which lies around 520 light years away from Earth.

Using the European Southern

Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), which is located in Chile, the researchers were able to observe a spiral structure with a twist near the centre, suggesting that there may be a new world in the process of forming.

The swirling disc is 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, PSL University, France, said: “Thousands of exoplanets have been identified so far, but little is known about how they form. 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 as they developed.

Dr Boccaletti and his team of astronomers used VLT’s Sphere instrument to take photos of AB

Aurigae, which show “a stunning spiral of dust” caused by the baby planet trying to “kick” the gas.

The same instrument was used in 2018 to take photos of another infant planet, thought to be just 5.4 million years old.

According Emmanuel Di Folco, of the Astrophysics Laboratory (LAB) of Bordeaux in France and one of the study authors, this socalled kicking phenomenon causes “disturbances in the disc in the form of a wave, somewhat like the wake of a boat on a lake”.

As the new planet rotates around AB Aurigae, it causes the surrounding gas and dust to be shaped into a spiral arm. The very bright yellow region formed near the centre of the spiral is the twist, which lies at about the same distance from the star as Neptune from the Sun.

The observations of the research are reported in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.