Scientists Image Planets Forming Around Nearby Star HL Tau

The image has been released by scientists working with the Atacama Large Array and shows a young star known as HL Tau complete with a disk of dust and gas from which planets form.
HL Tau is believed to be as young as just a million years and the image released gives a tantalizing glimpse of planetary formation similar to our own solar system with one of the new planets at a similar distance from its star as Earth is from ours.

The ALMA image showed gaps in the disk, presumably caused by planet-like bodies sweeping out the dust along their orbits. This image, showing in real life what theorists had proposed for years

The new VLA images revealed a distinct clump of dust in the inner region of the disk. The clump, the scientists said, contains roughly 3 to 8 times the mass of the Earth. "We believe this clump of dust represents the earliest stage in the formation of protoplanets, and this is the first time we've seen that stage," said Thomas Henning, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA).

"This is an important discovery, because we have not yet been able to observe most stages in the process of planet formation," said Carlos Carrasco-Gonzalez from the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics (IRyA) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). "This is quite different from the case of star formation, where, in different objects, we have seen stars in different stages of their life cycle. With planets, we haven't been so fortunate, so getting a look at this very early stage in planet formation is extremely valuable," he added.
public.nrao.edu...

a reply to: gortex

Yes! Finally!

There is nothing like a model being proven correct by nothing less than pictures of the actual event! We can finally witness the birth of worlds!

Beautiful, isn't it? I notice two, no, three rings of darkness - seems like there is already some newborn planets in orbit in there (two of them quite huge by the looks of their wake), clearing a circular, debris-free path around the star. Notice also how far the protoplanetary disk extends - a mirror of our own Oort's Cloud, at a younger stage.

S&F mate

a reply to: swanne

Exactly , another example of theory being shown to be correct by observation.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: swanne

Exactly , another example of theory being shown to be correct by observation.

I was just thinking the exact same thing!

I was going to post the same from Max Plank Institute for Astronomy!

Link: Sharp pictures of planetary embryo show ultra-quick mode of planet formation

Oh well. In other cool astronomy news, did you see Earthsky.org article: The extremely hot heart of quasar 3C273 not so much for what they are observing (which is cool in and of itself) but how they observed it (from article):

By combining signals recorded from radio antennas on Earth and in space – effectively creating a telescope of almost 8-Earth-diameters in size – scientists have, for the first time, gotten a look at fine structure in the radio-emitting regions of quasar 3C273, which was the first quasar known and is still one of the brightest quasars known. The result has been startling, violating a theoretical upper temperature limit.

And I thought the VLA was cool enough! Now they can combine a radio telescope in space with ones on the ground!
Sorry gortex, don't mean to derail your thread! But I had to share!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Holy balls. So they're basically making a few radio telescopes act like a single mirrored telescope ( I know that's the basic way of looking at it), but on a massive scale. That's pretty neat.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Oh my word you have just given me an idea.

(Goosebumps)

a reply to: gortex

Now let's go alter their DNA and become their "Extraterrestrials"!!!

Great Find!

a reply to: swanne

There is nothing like a model being proven correct by nothing less than pictures of the actual event! We can finally witness the birth of worlds!

You mean...pictures of flat earth panels being assembled ?

That looks utterly amazing. Thanks for posting it!

I do have a noob question

Those inner lines represent the wake of a planet streaming through the dust, why does it look evenly cleared out in the whole 360°? Wouldn't there be some kind of relapse of dust towards the center star again?

Or are we talking such massive speeds of orbit that the gravitational pull of the star just can't work hard enough on those particles, which would mean that almost nothing beyond that outer orbiting planet could get closer to the center anymore, and in turn would make the outer planet one of the biggest ones considering it's going to attract most of the dust?

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: swanne

There is nothing like a model being proven correct by nothing less than pictures of the actual event! We can finally witness the birth of worlds!

You mean...pictures of flat earth panels being assembled ?

Only in Slartbartfast's custom-made planet factory, mate.

originally posted by: Balans
That looks utterly amazing. Thanks for posting it!

I do have a noob question

Those inner lines represent the wake of a planet streaming through the dust, why does it look evenly cleared out in the whole 360°? Wouldn't there be some kind of relapse of dust towards the center star again?

Newton's laws. Stuff which has been kicked away will keep on traveling away, unless you apply a force to bring it back. The star is good at attracting matter, but is too weak to compensate the kick which the planet gave. Thus, the wake doesn't really relapse - and the moment it does, it's too late, the planet is coming back around.

a reply to: Balans

I think its because as the planets start to form and get bigger the gravity they produces attracts other nearby material clearing the path , there may be other material within the circles just we don't see it.

The VLA went through some upgrades last year. They had been running fine on 70's tech...

However, modern advances in receiver and computing technology have catapulted over those years. Scientists here felt that an overhaul of the guts of the antennas and the installation of a fiber-optically fed supercomputer would turn the VLA into a state-of-the-art instrument once again.

Source: National Radio Astronomy Observatory: VLA Tech

With the upgrades they were able to spread the antennae further apart resulting in finer detail. Expect more stories like this one over the next few years!

a reply to: swanne
a reply to: gortex

I guess that'll be it and the picture is just not clear enough. Even to see where the actual planet is, I was suspecting a vortex of some kind untill I remembered we're working in space here hehe. If I were to guess where the outer one is located I'd say at about 155°, there seems to be a bit more disturbance there but that's just taking a wholly uninformed shot at it.

Also, why are those orbits so nicely center-rounded in shape?

The image keeps amazing me.

a reply to: TerryDon79

[T]he international team used the Earth-to-Space Interferometer RadioAstron. The interferometer consists of an orbiting radio telescope working together with the largest ground telescopes: the 100-meter Effelsberg Telescope, the 110-m Green Bank Telescope, the 300-m Arecibo Observatory, and the Very Large Array. Operating together, these observatories provide the highest direct resolution ever achieved in astronomy, thousands of times finer than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Source: Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy: To the center of the brightest quasar

The VLA now can place themselves 22 miles across! Have we just reached a new "golden age" of radio telescope observation?

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

22 miles? Holy crap!

That's just a tad bigger than anything we've had before

I'm expecting A LOT of new, clearer, further away images than we've ever had before.

Can you imagine the clarity of things a lot closer that we only have grainy images of?

Aww! Such cute widdle baby planets! Can't wait for the JWST to come online. It's such a great time to be alive. Things like this are so neat.

a reply to: TerryDon79

For your viewing pleasure! There is a 24 minute film that is narrated by Jodi Foster discussing the VLA (officially, Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array). It is called Beyond the Visible: The Story of the Very Large Array and can also be seen at the VLA visitor's center.

YouTube - Beyond the Visible: The Story of the Very Large Array, 2013