Astronomers witness baby planets forming around distant infant star

Shortly after spotting a newborn alien solar system, scientists have also got a unique opportunity to experience another rare cosmic first – baby planets forming around the newborn star called HOPS-315 – giving them a glimpse into the early planetary formation process.

As it happens, astronomers have discovered the earliest seeds of rocky planets coming into being in the gas surrounding a baby sun-like star, receiving for the first time a snapshot of ‘time zero,’ when new worlds begin to form, according to a report published on July 20.

Specifically, the infant star in question is HOPS-315, a yellow dwarf in the making like the sun, only a lot younger at 100,000 to 200,000 years old and about 1,370 light-years away (one light-year = 6 trillion miles). Here, an international research team discovered signs of early planet formation.

Signs of baby planets

What enabled them to observe these condensing solid specks was a gap in the outer part of the gas disk around the infant star, thanks to the way the star tilts toward Earth. In the words of Leiden Observatory’s Melissa McClure from the Netherlands, who led the team:

“We’ve captured a direct glimpse of the hot region where rocky planets like Earth are born around young protostars. (…) For the first time, we can conclusively say that the first steps of planet formation are happening right now.”

Indeed, they identified silicon monoxide gas and crystalline silicate minerals, the ingredients for the first solid materials to form in our own solar system over 4.5 billion years ago, and it’s taking place in a location much like the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, containing the planets’ leftover building blocks.

Furthermore, McClure explained that this was a first-ever discovery of condensing of hot minerals around a young star, something the scientific community never experienced before, “so we didn’t know if it was a universal feature of planet formation or a weird feature of our solar system.” 

Now, thanks to a stunning picture taken by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile and its Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope network, they understand it might be a common process during the earliest stages of planetary formation. 

As it happens, the picture shows the emerging planetary system resembling a lightning bug glowing against the black void.

As a reminder, astronomers have used combined observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the ALMA to observe the protostar HOPS-315, which lies in a giant star-forming region in the constellation of Orion, weighing in at 0.6 solar mass and someday growing into a star much like our own Sun.