Researchers Capture 1st Photo of Planet in Making

Image shows a composite where blue represents the MagAO data taken at H-alpha, and green and red show the LBT data taken at Ks and L’ bands. The greyscale is a previously published millimeter image of the disk. Credit: Photo credit: Stephanie Sallum

Capturing sharp images of distant objects is difficult, largely due to atmospheric turbulence, the mixing of hot and cold air. But researchers captured the first photo of a planet in the making, a planet residing in a gap in LkCa15’s protoplanetary disk. Of the roughly 2,000 known exoplanets, only about 10 have been imaged – and long after they had formed, not when they were in the making.

Protoplanetary disks form around young stars using the debris left over from the star’s formation. It is suspected that planets then form inside the disk, sweeping up dust and debris as the material falls onto the planets instead of staying in the disk or falling onto the star. A gap is then cleared in which planets can reside.

The researchers’ new observations support that view. Sallum says researchers are just now being able to image objects that are close to and much fainter than a nearby star. “That’s because of researchers at the University of Arizona who have developed the instruments and techniques that make that difficult observation possible,” she says. Those instruments include the Large Binocular Telescope, or LBT, the world’s largest telescope, on Arizona’s Mount Graham, and the UA’s Magellan Telescope and its Adaptive Optics System, MagAO, located in Chile.

“When you look through the Earth’s atmosphere, what you’re seeing is cold and hot air mixing in a turbulent way that makes stars shimmer,” says Laird Close, UA astronomy professor and Follette’s graduate adviser. “To a big telescope, it’s a fairly dramatic thing. You see a horrible-looking image, but it’s the same phenomenon that makes city lights and stars twinkle.”

Josh Eisner, UA astronomy professor and Sallum’s graduate adviser, says big telescopes “always suffer from this type of thing.” But by using the LBT adaptive optics system and a novel imaging technique, he and Sallum succeeded in getting the crispest infrared images yet of LkCa15.

Meanwhile, Close and Follette used Magellan’s adaptive optics system MagAO to independently corroborate Eisner and Sallum’s planetary findings. “Results like this have only been made possible with the application of a lot of very advanced new technology to the business of imaging the stars,” says professor Peter Tuthill of the University of Sydney. “and it’s really great to see them yielding such impressive results.” http://uanews.org/story/researchers-capture-first-photo-of-planet-in-making