Hubble Finds a Massive Planet – 9 Times the Size of Jupiter – Forming Through a Violent Process

Protoplanet Around AB Aurigae

This is an artist’s illustration of a massive, newly forming exoplanet called AB Aurigae b. Researchers used new and archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Subaru Telescope to confirm this protoplanet is forming through an intense and violent process, called disk instability. Disk instability is a top-down approach, much different from the dominant core accretion model. In this scenario, a massive disk around a star cools, and gravity causes the disk to rapidly break up into one or more planet-mass fragments. AB Aurigae b is estimated to be about nine times more massive than Jupiter and orbits its host star over two times farther than Pluto is from our Sun. Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

Hubble Finds a Planet Forming in an Unconventional Way

In general, the formation of planets in our universe can be likened to cooking a meal. Just like the “ingredients” for forming a planet can change, so can the “cooking method.”

Researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope have caught a planet in the act of what could be likened to a “flash fry” — a violent and intense process called disk instability. In this method, instead of having a planet that grows and builds up from a small core accumulating matter and gas, the protoplanetary disk around a star cools, and gravity causes it to break up into one or more planet-mass fragments.

Astronomers have long searched for clear evidence of this process as a viable candidate in forming large, Jupiter-like planets, and Hubble’s resolution and longevity proved to be a key missing puzzle piece.

AB Aurigae b Hubble Images

Researchers were able to directly image newly forming exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a 13-year span using Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and its Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS). In the top right, Hubble’s NICMOS image captured in 2007 shows AB Aurigae b in a due south position compared to its host star, which is covered by the instrument’s coronagraph. The image captured in 2021 by STIS shows the protoplanet has moved in a counterclockwise motion over time. Credit: Science: NASA, ESA, Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.); Image Processing: Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Evidence shows violent collapse responsible for formation of Jupiter-like protoplanet.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has directly photographed evidence of a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through what researchers describe as an “intense and violent process.” This discovery supports a long-debated theory for how planets like Jupiter form, called “disk instability.”

The new world under construction is embedded in a protoplanetary disk of dust and gas with distinct spiral structure swirling around, surrounding a young star that’s estimated to be around 2 million years old. That’s about the age of our solar system when planet formation was underway. (The solar system’s age is currently 4.6 billion years.)

“Nature is clever; it can produce planets in a range of different ways,” said Thayne Currie of the Subaru Telescope and Eureka Scientific, lead researcher on the study.

All planets are made from material that originated in a circumstellar disk. The dominant theory for jovian planet formation is called “core accretion,” a bottom-up approach where planets embedded in the disk grow from small objects — with sizes ranging from dust grains to boulders — colliding and sticking together as they orbit a star. This core then slowly accumulates gas from the disk. In contrast, the disk instability approach is a top-down model where as a massive disk around a star cools, gravity causes the disk to rapidly break up into one or more planet-mass fragments.

The newly forming planet, called AB Aurigae b, is probably about nine times more massive than Jupiter and orbits its host star at a whopping distance of 8.6 billion miles – over two times farther than Pluto is from our Sun. At that distance it would take a very long time, if ever, for a Jupiter-sized planet to form by core accretion. This leads researchers to conclude that the disk instability has enabled this planet to form at such a great distance. And, it is in a striking contrast to expectations of planet formation by the widely accepted core accretion model.

The new analysis combines data from two Hubble instruments: the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph. These data were compared to those from a state-of-the-art planet imaging instrument called SCExAO on Japan’s 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope located at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The wealth of data from space and ground-based telescopes proved critical, because distinguishing between infant planets and complex disk features unrelated to planets is very difficult.

“Interpreting this system is extremely challenging,” Currie said. “This is one of the reasons why we needed Hubble for this project—a clean image to better separate the light from the disk and any planet.”

Nature itself also provided a helping hand: the vast disk of dust and gas swirling around the star AB Aurigae is tilted nearly face-on to our view from Earth.

Currie emphasized that Hubble’s longevity played a particular role in helping researchers measure the protoplanet’s orbit. He was originally very skeptical that AB Aurigae b was a planet. The archival data from Hubble, combined with imaging from Subaru, proved to be a turning point in changing his mind.

“We could not detect this motion on the order of a year or two years,” Currie said. “Hubble provided a time baseline, combined with Subaru data, of 13 years, which was sufficient to be able to detect orbital motion.”

“This result leverages ground and space observations and we get to go back in time with Hubble archival observations,” Olivier Guyon of the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Subaru Telescope, Hawaii added. “AB Aurigae b has now been looked at in multiple wavelengths, and a consistent picture has emerged—one that’s very solid.”

The team’s results are published in the April 4, 2022, issue of Nature Astronomy.

“This new discovery is strong evidence that some gas giant planets can form by the disk instability mechanism,” Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington, D.C. emphasized. “In the end, gravity is all that counts, as the leftovers of the star-formation process will end up being pulled together by gravity to form planets, one way or the other.”

Understanding the early days of the formation of Jupiter-like planets provides astronomers with more context into the history of our own solar system. This discovery paves the way for future studies of the chemical make-up of protoplanetary disks like AB Aurigae, including with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

Reference: “Images of embedded Jovian planet formation at a wide separation around AB Aurigae” by Thayne Currie, Kellen Lawson, Glenn Schneider, Wladimir Lyra, John Wisniewski, Carol Grady, Olivier Guyon, Motohide Tamura, Takayuki Kotani, Hajime Kawahara, Timothy Brandt, Taichi Uyama, Takayuki Muto, Ruobing Dong, Tomoyuki Kudo, Jun Hashimoto, Misato Fukagawa, Kevin Wagner, Julien Lozi, Jeffrey Chilcote, Taylor Tobin, Tyler Groff, Kimberly Ward-Duong, William Januszewski, Barnaby Norris, Peter Tuthill, Nienke van der Marel, Michael Sitko, Vincent Deo, Sebastien Vievard, Nemanja Jovanovic, Frantz Martinache and Nour Skaf, 4 April 2022, Nature Astronomy.
DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01634-x

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.

7 Comments on "Hubble Finds a Massive Planet – 9 Times the Size of Jupiter – Forming Through a Violent Process"

  1. As time goes on – we understand more. I actually never thought of planets forming or growing.

  2. Disappointed that a science site is confusing size and mass. Do better Scitechdaily

  3. So as the telescope looks out there further and further, isn’t it looking baaack into time. So “when” would this colossal planet have been forming? And if this was long ago, what does it look like closer to now?

    What am I missing here?

    • Tomáš Hruška | April 5, 2022 at 9:55 am | Reply

      adamE
      @[email protected],
      Nejblíže je k tomu teorie “kolaps vlnové funkce” takzvaná super pozice. Vidíš pořád stejně, ale jakmile změřit tak už tam ta planeta není. Kolaps vlnové funkce. Abys to pochopil tve vědomí teleportujes do nanostruktury za horizont události (tam neexistuje čas) a jak se tvé vědomí vrátí zpět do společnosti ve které vegetativní bydlíš čas se tam změnil, proto nemůžeš opakovaným měřením vypočítat shoda.
      P@ KAR》°《ANTÉNA

  4. This confusion is what science gets for trying to make all the celestial objects out of mere clouds of gas and dust. Unfortunately, the Big Bang “theory” should really be called the Big Bang “fact” so there will be no advances in the understanding of planet creation any time soon.

    Our universe isn’t expanding and Edwin Hubble never wanted it to. The galaxies are expanding because they are shrapnel from a massive collision that was the Big Bang. Each galaxy was born in the quark plasma state which is the most efficient plasma in the universe. It uses nothing but quarks to exist and its catalyst is the dark matter of space that creates gravity. This plasma is optically invisible because it only releases gamma rays and it can also create shapes. Our galaxy was a spinning mass of this plasma initially. Centrifugal force spread the matter into a disk with a bulbous center. The center eventually separated from the disk and our black hole was formed. The rest of the disk was left to create all the solar systems that orbit our black hole.

    That is where the formation of this planet in the article comes into play. The solar system it is in was a single mass of quark plasma initially, not gas and dust. All the energy was already there for everything. There was no need for gravity to create it and the assumption that gravity created all the energy is exactly why science doesn’t understand gravity.

    That solar system was spinning and did exactly what our galaxy did. The Jupiter like planet is so far away from its star because the initial quark plasma disk spread out very efficiently and far. All celestial objects, including this planet, began their lives as masses of quark plasma and the rate they have cooled is based on the size of the initial mass. That is why our Sun is a bright star, Jupiter is a planet that emits massive radiation, and our moon is a lifeless rock. The smaller the initial mass of quark plasma, the faster it cools to a rock.

    This is a paradigm shift explanation. All laws are followed. The problem is nobody wants to listen because, as I stated earlier, the big bang theory is a fact and nobody realizes that this “fact” is why, literally, nothing is understood about our universe.

  5. @Adam James. We don’t know what it looks like now. If a system is 1.5 billion light-years away, we are seeing how it was 1.5 billion years before 2022 on earth. If you want to know what it looks like right now in 2022, you would need to wait another 1.5 billion years.

  6. James Webb, so excited!!!.
    God’s speed.

Leave a Reply to Chris W Cancel reply

Email address is optional. If provided, your email will not be published or shared.