Stellar Dust Formation: Birth of Jupiter-like Planets

 The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has unveiled an intriguing image that offers insights into the formation of massive planets akin to Jupiter. This groundbreaking image, captured using the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), reveals significant quantities of dust surrounding a juvenile star, hinting at the potential birth of colossal planets.

The image, captured by the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on the VLT, depicts the intricate details of the material swirling around V960 Mon, a young star situated over 5,000 light-years away in the Unicorn constellation. The star had piqued astronomers' interest back in 2014 when its luminance skyrocketed over 20 times. The material surrounding V960 Mon is accumulating in a series of complex spiral arms, stretching distances greater than our entire Solar System.

By analyzing archival observations, researchers are working to understand how giant planets are formed - through 'core accretion' where dust particles merge, or 'gravitational instability', where massive chunks of star-surrounding material contract and collapse.

The upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) by ESO, currently under construction in Chile's Atacama Desert, is set to play a pivotal role in this research, providing unprecedented detail and crucial information about this captivating planetary system in the making.

Source: ESO