Protoplanetary Discs being Shaped by Newborn Planets tagged posts

Sculpting Solar systems: Instrument reveals Protoplanetary Discs being Shaped by Newborn Planets

These three planetary discs have been observed with the SPHERE instrument, mounted on ESO's Very Large Telescope. The observations were made in order to shed light on the enigmatic evolution of fledgling planetary systems. The central parts of the images appear dark because SPHERE blocks out the light from the brilliant central stars to reveal the much fainter structures surrounding them. Credit: ESO

These three planetary discs have been observed with the SPHERE instrument, mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The observations were made in order to shed light on the enigmatic evolution of fledgling planetary systems. The central parts of the images appear dark because SPHERE blocks out the light from the brilliant central stars to reveal the much fainter structures surrounding them. Credit: ESO

3 teams of astronomers have made use of SPHERE, an advanced exoplanet-hunting instrument on the VLT at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, in order to shed light on the enigmatic evolution of fledgling planetary systems. The explosion in the number of known exoplanets in recent years has made the study of them one of the most dynamic fields in modern astronomy...

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