UA’s Magellan Telescope and its Adaptive Optics System tagged posts

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...