Taurus-Auriga tagged posts

This false-color image from a sub-millimeter interferometric telescope shows the circumstellar disk of gas and dust that surrounds star CI Tau. Credit: Stephane Guilloteau/University of Bordeaux

Jupiter-like ‘CI Tau b’ orbits 2 million-year-old star in constellation Taurus. In contradiction to the long-standing idea that larger planets take longer to form, US astronomers today announced the discovery of a giant planet in close orbit around a star so young that it still retains a disk of circumstellar gas and dust.

“For decades, conventional wisdom held that large Jupiter-mass planets take a minimum of 10 million years to form,” said Christopher Johns-Krull. “That’s been called into question over the past decade” CI Tau b is at least 8X larger than Jupiter, ~450 light years from Earth...