In a groundbreaking observation, astronomers have detected the earliest signs of planet formation around a star very much like our sun. Using the James Webb Space Telescope and a radio astronomy observatory in Chile, the first specks of planet-forming material were detected around a star called HOPS-315, about 1,300 light-years from the solar system.
“For the first time, we have identified the earliest moment when planet formation is initiated around a star other than our sun,” said Melissa McClure, a professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the new study, published today in Nature.
Groundbreaking Observation
The observation of the first signs of planet-forming material — hot minerals just beginning to solidify — around a sun-like star is critical for astronomers trying to understand how planets like Earth formed.
“We’re seeing a system that looks like what our solar system looked like when it was just beginning to form,” said co-author Merel van ‘t Hoff, a professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. She compared the findings to “a picture of the baby solar system.”
Welcome To HOPS-315
HOPS-315 is a “proto” star — a very young star in the early stages of its formation before it becomes a nuclear fusion reactor — and a close analog of the sun when it was young, some 4.6 billion years ago. It’s in the constellation Orion, close to a blue reflection nebula called M78 and NGC 2068.
It’s not the first star to host signs of planets forming, but elsewhere, astronomers have only been able to detect discs of gas and dust, known as protoplanetary discs, where new planets are being born. This is the first time the first solid parts of planets have been detected. The European Southern Observatory also published an animation on YouTube to illustrates the process.
Ancient Meteorites
In the solar system, ancient meteorites sometimes contain crystalline minerals that contain silicon monoxide, which can condense at the extremely high temperatures present in young planetary discs to form planets. In this research, silicon monoxide was detected as a gas and within crystalline minerals, suggesting it’s just beginning to solidify.
“This process has never been seen before in a protoplanetary disc — or anywhere outside our solar system,” said co-author Edwin Bergin, a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
How The Discovery Was Made
The star system was studied using Webb and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Observatory, an array of 66 radio antennae on a mountain in Chile’s Atacama desert close to the border with Bolivia. It’s the world’s largest astronomy project.
Together, they detected the chemical signals from something akin to the asteroid belt in the solar system. That adds another layer of intrigue. “We’re really seeing these minerals at the same location in this extrasolar system as where we see them in asteroids in the solar system,“ said co-author Logan Francis, a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
