Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
A team of scientists led by the University of Hawaii discovered one of the planet youngest ever found. This planet is newly formed and can be observed directly.
The planet, named 2M0437b, joins several objects that make human understanding of how planets form and change over time clearer. The presence of this new planet also helps explain the origin of the Solar System and Earth.
In-depth research into this baby planet was recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“This coincidental discovery adds to the elite list of planets that we can observe directly with our telescopes. By analyzing the light from this planet, we can say something about its composition, and perhaps where and how it formed in the long-disappearing disk of gas and dust in the sky. around its host star,” said lead author Eric Gaidos, a professor in the UH Manoa Department of Earth Sciences Science Daily.
Researchers estimate the planet is several times larger than Jupiter and formed with its star several million years ago. The planet is so young that it still released heat energy during its formation, with temperatures similar to the lava that erupted from Mount Kilauea.
First seen in the Maunakea telescope
The new planet was first spotted in an image captured by the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea in 2018 by UH Institute for Astronomy (IfA) visiting researcher Teruyuki Hirano. Over the past few years, Hirano has also been closely studying the existence of the new planet using other telescopes on Maunkea.
Gaidos and his collaborators used the Keck Observatory on Maunakea to monitor the position of the parent star as it moved across the sky. This was done to ensure that the planet 2M0437b is really a companion star, not a more distant object.
Through observations that took three years as the star moved slowly across the sky it was discovered that the Baby Planet and its parent star are said to be located in a nursery called the Taurus Cloud.
Planet 2M0437b is in a much wider orbit than the planets in the Solar System with its current separation of about a hundred times the Earth-Sun distance, making it easier to observe. However, advanced adaptive optics are still needed to compensate for image distortion caused by Earth’s atmosphere.
“The world’s two largest telescopes, adaptive optics technology, and the clear skies of Maunakea were all needed to make this discovery. We are all looking forward to more such discoveries, and more detailed studies of such planets with future technologies and telescopes.” said co-author Michael Liu, astronomer at IfA.
Future research potential
In the future, collecting more in-depth research on the newly discovered planet is said to be very possible.
The reason is, currently the star orbiting 2M0437b is too dim to be seen with the naked eye. Although in Hawaii today the young planet and other baby stars in the Taurus Cloud directly overhead can be clearly seen in the pre-dawn hours, north of the bright star Hokuʻula (Aldeberan) and east of the Makaliʻi (Pleiades) star cluster.
“Observations with space telescopes such as NASA’s Hubble and the soon-to-be-launched James Webb Space Telescope can identify gases in its atmosphere and reveal whether the planet has a moon-forming disk,” Gaidos added.
(TTF/mik)
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