Planet formation

Planets are formed in the disk of dust and gas that surround young stars. Looking at his
birthplace mean traveling to the Earth's past with his brothers. Now, astronomers have
been able to obtain a detailed picture star with a protoplanetary disk using the telescope
Subaru in Hawaii. This is the first time that disk structures comparable to the size of our
solar system have revealed this clearly, showing features such as rings and gaps related
to the formation of giant planets.
These observations are part of a systematic survey to search for planets and disks
around young stars using sophisticated cameras designed specifically for this purpose.

Planetary system, as well as our planetary system, shared origins as a byproduct of star
formation. Newborn star's gravity gathers leftover gas and dust in a dense disk of
material orbiting the star. Clots in this dish collect more and more material, until their
own gravity becomes sufficiently strong to compress them into the dense bodies we
know as planets. In recent years it has seen substantial advances both in observations
(mostly indirect) and in theoretical modeling such as disk "protoplanetary". Two recent
observations have added an interesting new details, revealing some structures that had
never been seen directly.

One of the two studies are targeting the star LkCa 15, which lies about 450 light-years
from Earth in the constellation Taurus. At the age of a few million years, LkCa 15 is a
young star - the Sun is a thousand times older. From previous observations of the
spectrum of infrared and millimeter emissions, scientists have inferred the existence of
a large gap in the middle of the protoplanetary disk. New images show starlight
gleaming on the disk surface, clearly outlining the sharp edge of the gap for the first
time. Most interestingly, the elliptical shape of the gap is not centered on the star, but
appears lopsided.
"The most likely explanation for the gap disc LkCa 15, and particularly in asymmetry, is
that one or more planets, newborn from the material disc, has swept the gas and dust
along their orbits," says Christian Thalmann, who led the study while on staff Max
Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA). Interestingly, the disk gap large enough to
accommodate the orbits of all the planets in our own solar system. So, it is quite
tempting to speculate that LkCa 15 may be in the process of forming the whole planetary
system similar to our planetary system. "We have not detected the planets themselves,"
adds Thalmann. "But that could change soon."
The second observation, led by Jun Hashimoto (National Observatory of Japan), targets
the star AB Aur in the constellation Auriga, at a distance of 470 light years from Earth.
This star is even younger, only a million years old. Observation is the first to show the
details of the length scale compared to the size of our solar system - for comparison: At a
distance of 470 light years, the solar system has the same size as obvious as 1 Euro coin
when seen at a distance of over 10 km. They show hatchery rings of material that is
angled towards the equatorial plane of the disc, and the material is not distributed
symmetrically around the star - irregular features that indicate the presence of at least
one very massive planet.
Both of these observations made with instruments HiCIAO the 8.2 meter Subaru
Telescope. Imaging disk or planet close to the star is a big challenge, because it is very
difficult to distinguish the light emitted by those objects in the glare of intense star.
HiCIAO meet this challenge by correcting the distorting effects of Earth's atmosphere
and physically block some of the light of stars.