It is the most difficult to study and little known transition stage of what will later become a planetary system. The astronomers who have detected these signals or signs of formation are part of an international team of scientists that has the participation of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).
Planets are made up of disks of gas and dust that revolve around the youngest stars. Once the germ or “seed” of the planet is formed, it adds material and produces a groove in the disk in the shape of its orbit. This is precisely the moment that astronomers have been able to observe in the star HD169142 , a young star, which has twice the mass of the Sun and whose disk is about 37.5 billion kilometers.
“Although more than 1,700 exoplanets have been discovered in recent years, only in a few cases has a direct image been obtained and an image of a planet in formation has not yet been obtained . In HD169142 you could be seeing the seeds of gas and dust that later will become planets ”, says Mayra Osorio, co-author of the study that has been published in two articles in The Astrophysical Journal .
After exploring the disk with the Very Large Arrway radio telescope, the scientists focused on tracking, using the Very Large Telescope infrared telescope, if there were any objects in the grooves of the disk; discovered a strong signal in the internal cavity, which could mean that a planet is forming or perhaps a brown dwarf.
“ In future observations we will be able to check if the disk houses one or two objects . In any case, HD169142 constitutes a promising object because it is one of the few known transition disks and it is revealing the environment in which planets form, “ concludes Osorio.
