A spectacular photo of a binary star system with its own debris disk and a planet

These are the kind of images I love to see - direct photos of stellar discs and exoplanets, as if we're already travelling towards them in interstellar ships and snapping photos with telephoto lens.

Planet-hunting SPHERE Images First Circumbinary Planet System with Disc

Observations by ESO’s planet-finding instrument, SPHERE, a high-contrast adaptive optics system installed on the third Unit Telescope of ESO’s Very Large Telescope, have revealed the edge-on disc of gas and dust present around the binary star system HD 106906AB.

HD 106906AB is a double star located in the constellation of Crux (The Southern Cross). Astronomers had long suspected that this 13 million-year-old stellar duo was encircled by a debris disc, due to the system’s youth and characteristic radiation. However, this disc had remained unseen — until now! The system’s spectacular debris disc can be seen towards the lower left area of this image. It is surrounding both stars, hence its name of circumbinary disc. The stars themselves are hidden behind a mask which prevent their glare from blinding the instrument.

These stars and the disc are also accompanied by an exoplanet, visible in the upper right, named HD 106906 b, which orbits around the binary star and its disc at a distance greater than any other exoplanet discovered to date — 650 times the average Earth–Sun distance, or nearly 97 billion kilometres. HD 106906 b has a mammoth mass of up to 11 times that of Jupiter, and a scorching surface temperature of 1500 degrees Celsius.

Thanks to SPHERE, HD 106906AB has become the first binary star system to have both an exoplanet and a debris disc successfully imaged, providing astronomers with a unique opportunity to study the complex process of circumbinary planet formation.

The planet itself is remarkable - orbiting its stars at such a huge distance, and being so large and hot I'm tempted to call it a sub-brown dwarf. The question is whether it formed from the stars' protoplanetary disc, like any regular planet, or if it formed as a nearby sub-stellar companion.

a reply to: wildespace

AMAZING SHOT, that is freaking COOL

Wow just think how lucky we are to be alive at the moment.
Pics of Pluto and now this!!.

Gobsmascked and found my new background pic .

originally posted by: boymonkey74
Wow just think how lucky we are to be alive at the moment.
Pics of Pluto and now this!!.

Gobsmascked and found my new background pic

.

in the next decade or so, STRAP YOURSELF IN. It's going to be a wild ride my friend

If only we could get a pic like this of that other star everyone is imagining varies in brightness as a result of alien tech.

a reply to: wildespace

This is the astronomers version of 'Miss October.'

Now that is a disc that goes all the way up. Grrrr.

a reply to: wildespace

where is this?

originally posted by: FamCore
a reply to: wildespace

AMAZING SHOT, that is freaking COOL

No it's not...END OF STORY!



I kid, I kid.

Its a ROCK!

originally posted by: VoidHawk
Its a ROCK!

You're absolutely right.
That image does rock!

originally posted by: Hyperia
a reply to: wildespace

where is this?

It's about 300 light years away in the constellation of Crux (The Southern Cross). The Wikipedia article also give you the coordinates: 12h 17m 53.19228s, −55° 58′ 31.8890″

Sky-Map.org link

Wow insane! The planet is 650 times farther away than the Earth is to our Sun, and 1500 degrees Celsius? Interesting how they put a "mask" over the binary stars, something we are not supposed to see? They need to take pictures of all the ex-planets discovered...

originally posted by: game over man
Wow insane! The planet is 650 times farther away than the Earth is to our Sun, and 1500 degrees Celsius?

Yeah, big gas giants generate a lot of heat from their gravity compressing the gas (Boyle's Law). Jupiter & Saturn are both hot, down deep. This exoplanet is much more massive and much younger, so it has a lot more heat.

originally posted by: game over man
Interesting how they put a "mask" over the binary stars, something we are not supposed to see? They need to take pictures of all the ex-planets discovered...

From the OP:

The stars themselves are hidden behind a mask which prevent their glare from blinding the instrument.

In other words, if the mask wasn't there, we couldn't see either the disk or the exoplanet.

A planet 97 billion kms from its parent stars that has a surface temperature of 1500 degrees Celsius, and a mass 11 times that of Jupiter? Sounds more like a brown dwarf to me.

a reply to: wildespace

Dude...chills. All up & down the spine

This is absolutely freakin' cool, like having your eyesight slowly come in to focus after waking, except it's another star system.

Furthermore, you know every Trekkie out there just crapped their pants knowing this is nails the temp qualification for a Class Y planet -- a Demon planet.

originally posted by: boymonkey74
Wow just think how lucky we are to be alive at the moment.
Pics of Pluto and now this!!.

Gobsmascked and found my new background pic

.

And a new Star Wars a couple of months away.

originally posted by: Mogget
A planet 97 billion kms from its parent stars that has a surface temperature of 1500 degrees Celsius, and a mass 11 times that of Jupiter? Sounds more like a brown dwarf to me.

Currently, the International Astronomical Union considers an object with a mass above the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium (currently calculated to be 13 MJ for objects of solar metallicity) to be a brown dwarf, whereas an object under that mass (and orbiting a star or stellar remnant) is considered a planet: home.dtm.ciw.edu...

However, if this object is not really orbiting the binary star, but is simply passing through, then it could be called a sub-brown dwarf.

originally posted by: Saint Exupery

originally posted by: game over man
Wow insane! The planet is 650 times farther away than the Earth is to our Sun, and 1500 degrees Celsius?

Yeah, big gas giants generate a lot of heat from their gravity compressing the gas (Boyle's Law). Jupiter & Saturn are both hot, down deep. This exoplanet is much more massive and much younger, so it has a lot more heat.

originally posted by: game over man
Interesting how they put a "mask" over the binary stars, something we are not supposed to see? They need to take pictures of all the ex-planets discovered...

From the OP:

The stars themselves are hidden behind a mask which prevent their glare from blinding the instrument.

In other words, if the mask wasn't there, we couldn't see either the disk or the exoplanet.

Wouldn't you like to see the star without the mask???

Jupiter's core is 35,000 C...this exo planet's surface is 1500C...Core vs Surface or am I missing something? Are you trying to downplay this discovery? Jupiter is also just under 5 times as far away from the Sun as Earth, not 650 times like this binary star system...

The exoplanet is not aligned with the plane of the debris disk around the stars which makes me think it's not a planet as such, more likely an object not formed there that was captured in the gravity of the binary star.

So this is how Tatooine with a disc looks like from earth telescopes ? I wonder how the gravity of two stars holds this planet in orbit.. Do those stars also have the same size and gravity and how elliptic would its trajectory be ?

And are the stars and planets trajectories all counter-clockwise?