The star PDS 70 is orbited by a ring of material and by a planet (bright dot) that is itself encircled by a disk of moon-forming material. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et al.
Planetary science
Far-off planet has a nursery for baby moons
Astronomers gazing at a distant planet have noticed that it is surrounded by a ring of gas and dust, where newborn moons might be coalescing.
Myriam Benisty at Grenoble Alps University in France and her colleagues used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile to peer at a star called PDS 70, which lies 112 parsecs from Earth. Scientists had previously detected two ‘gas giant’ planets — gas-rich worlds as big as Jupiter or larger — orbiting the star.
New images reveal that one of the planets is surrounded by a dusty disk, which extends to a distance roughly the same as that between Earth and the Sun. Moons might be forming in this disk as its gas and dust clumps together, just as planets form from similar disks around stars. There is enough material in the disk to create up to three moons the size of Earth’s Moon.
The images offer the clearest glimpse yet of one of these moon-forming disks, providing clues to how planetary systems form.
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