Post · Open Science

@esoastronomy@mastodon.social · last week

A very hungry planet! 🪐

That little dot is WISPIT 2b, a newborn exoplanet. About 5 times the mass of Jupiter, the planet is eating its way through its dusty cradle as it orbits the host star, a younger version of our Sun 🌞

Taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in #Chile, this image is the first clear detection of a baby planet in a disc with multiple rings.

📷 ESO/R. F. van Capelleveen et al.

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science

A white protoplanetary disc at the centre of the picture takes up most of the frame. The elliptical cloud of dust and gas consists of several concentric rings and gaps. In one of the larger gaps there is a little dot: a planet.

Tirrimas

@tirrimas@beige.party replied · last week

@esoastronomy mind-blowing. Simply amazing.

Guillotine Jones, Flâneur

@Guillotine_Jones@beige.party replied · last week

@esoastronomy
Obligatory Question: How far is this planet from Uranus?
(teehee)

WarpinWolf

@WarpinWolf@mastodon.egroc.de replied · last week

@esoastronomy 5 x Jupiter, and growing. Any chance it might ignite?

Christopher Brown

@christopherbrown@mastodon.social replied · last week

@esoastronomy @catsalad Getting Sinistar vibes from this post

A video sample of the video game arcade character Sinistar saying “I HUNGER.”

Faraiwe

@faraiwe@mstdn.social replied · last week

@esoastronomy Aaaaaaw, hungry, hungry baby planet...

(huge sucker)

Nikkileah 🎮🚄🏳️‍⚧️🇬🇧

@Nikkileah@mendeddrum.org replied · last week

@esoastronomy would it be fair to infer there's likely a protoplanet carving out the second ring gap, doing it's bulking up stage?

Luke Miller

@upmultimedia@mastodon.gamedev.place replied · last week

@esoastronomy amazing!

Nicola

@CryogenicIce9@mastodon.online replied · last week

@esoastronomy 430 Light years away, for anyone else that is interested and doesn't want to hit a brick wall of articles that don't state it..

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/irish-astronomers-stunned-new-planet-35793325

Niels Moseley

@trcwm@mastodon.social replied · last week

@esoastronomy Oh my! this is brilliant!

Reinald Kirchner

@Reinald@nrw.social replied · last week

@esoastronomy this is so amazing. Early 80s, when I was an astronomy nerd as a kid, I learned, we would never be able to do direct observations of exoplanets due to physical limitations of our telescopes. Now humanity can take pictures of planets forming and dust discs. Science is mindblowing.

lgsp

@lgsp@social.tchncs.de replied · last week

@esoastronomy

Incredible image!
There is something I don't understand: I suppose the star should be in the center of the discs, but I see only a dark bluish-black orb there. Why is it so?

MarkD

@markd@hachyderm.io replied · last week

@esoastronomy This is unbelievable. It was only a few years ago that exoplanets were barely detectable via gravitational perturbations and occultations.

Heck, it wasn't that long ago that the number of known exoplanets was a very small number.

And now we see them directly with great clarity?! Just amazing progress.

Kim Possible

@kimlockhartga@beige.party replied · last week

@esoastronomy Does it depend on the host star, while also drawing mass from it?

ESO

@esoastronomy@mastodon.social replied · last week

@kimlockhartga To clarify, the planet is drawing material from the disc, not the star itself. As the planet orbits the star it carves a gap within the disc.

Kim Possible

@kimlockhartga@beige.party replied · last week

@esoastronomy ah, that makes more sense. Thank you for explaining. I am fascinated by astronomy.

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