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    ALMA digs deeper into the Mystery of Planet Formation

    June 29, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Images of disks around 19 protostars, including 4 binary systems observed with ALMA. For 1 binary system, disks around the primary and secondary are presented independently (2nd line rightmost and 3rd line leftmost). Disks are presented in the order of their evolutionary sequence (the one in the upper-left corner is the youngest while the one at the lower-right corner is the oldest). The two oldest disks show faint ring-gap structures. A scale bar of 20 au (roughly the distance between the Sun and Uranus) is shown for each disk image. (Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), N. Ohashi et al.) Original size (1.0MB)

    An international research team used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe disks around 19 protostars with a very high resolution to search for the earliest...

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    Action of 2 Protostars appears to be making conditions right for Planet Formation

    December 29, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Action of two protostars appears to be making conditions right for planet formation
    Left: ALMA 1.3 mm observations toward the triple class 0 system IRAS 16293–2422. The observations have a resolution of ∼35 au and were published in Sadavoy et al. (2018). Right: ALMA 1.3 and 3 mm observations of the southern binary system at a resolution of ∼13 and ∼7 au, respectively. Similar maps for source B are presented in Zamponi et al. (2021). In all panels, the positions of the protostars are marked by stars. Additional continuum peaks around the A1 and A2 protostars are labeled and marked with plus signs in the right panels. The beam is shown in the bottom left corner of each panel. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2022). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aca53a

    A team of researchers at Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, working with a colleague at the U...

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    Study of ‘Polluted’ White Dwarfs finds that Stars and Planets Grow Together

    November 16, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist's impression of planet formation

    A team of astronomers have found that planet formation in our young Solar System started much earlier than previously thought, with the building blocks of planets growing at the same time as their parent star.

    A study of some of the oldest stars in the Universe suggests that the building blocks of planets like Jupiter and Saturn begin to form while a young star is growing. It had been thought that planets only form once a star has reached its final size, but new results, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests that stars and planets ‘grow up’ together.

    The research, led by the University of Cambridge, changes our understanding of how planetary systems, including our own Solar System, formed, potentially solving a major puzzle in astronomy.

    “We have a pretty good i...

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    Microscopic view on Asteroid Collisions could help us Understand Planet Formation

    February 25, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A new way of dating collisions between asteroids and planetary bodies throughout our Solar System’s history could help scientists reconstruct how and when planets were born.

    A team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, combined dating and microscopic analysis of the Chelyabinsk meteorite — which fell to Earth and hit the headlines in 2013 — to get more accurate constraints on the timing of ancient impact events.

    Their study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, looked at how minerals within the meteorite were damaged by different impacts over time, meaning they could identify the biggest and oldest events that may have been involved in planetary formation.

    “Meteorite impact ages are often controversial: our work shows that we need to draw on multiple...

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