Science, Space and Technology News 2024
This artist’s impression shows the formation of a gas giant planet embedded in the disk of dust and gas in the ring of dust around a young star. A University of Michigan study, led by U-M astronomer Gabriele Cugno, aimed the James Webb Space Telescope at a protoplanetary disk surrounding a protostar called SAO 206462, hoping to find a gas giant planet in the act of forming.
“Several simulations suggest that the planet should be within the disk, massive, large, hot, and bright. But we didn’t find it. This means that either the planet is much colder than we think, or it may be obscured by some material that prevents us from seeing it,” said Cugno, also a co-author on all three papers. “What we have found is a different planet candidate, but we cannot tell with 100% certainty whether it’s a planet or a faint background star or galaxy contaminating our image.
“When material falls onto the planet, it shocks at the surface and gives off an emission line at specific wavelengths,” Cugno said. “We use a set of narrow-band filters to try to detect this accretion. This has been done before from the ground at optical wavelengths, but this is the first time it’s been done in the infrared with JWST.”The University of Victoria paper, led by astronomy student Camryn Mullin, describes images of the disk surrounding the young star HL Tau.
“While there is a ton of evidence for ongoing planet formation, HL Tau is too young with too much intervening dust to see the planets directly,” said Jarron Leisenring, the principal investigator of thesearching for forming planets and astronomer at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory. “We have already begun looking at other young systems with known planets to help form a more complete picture.
“The lack of planets detected in all three systems tells us that the planets causing the gaps and spiral arms either are too close to their host stars or too faint to be seen with JWST,” said Wagner, a co-author of all three studies. “If the latter is true, it tells us that they’re of relatively low mass, low temperature, enshrouded in dust, or some combination of the three—as is likely the case in MWC 758.
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