Stunning images of swirling gas and dust may show a planet forming
For the first time, astronomers may have seen direct evidence of a planet forming around a young star. A spiral disk of gas and dust surrounding the star AB Aurigae contains a small S-shaped twist near the spiral’s center, infrared telescope images show. That twist “is the precise spot where a new planet must be forming,” says astrophysicist Emmanuel Di Folco of the University of Bordeaux in France. Previously, astronomers have seen gaps (SN: 11/6/14) and large-scale spirals (SN: 6/14/18) that are thought to be created by unseen planets in disks of gas and dust around young stars. Theories of how planets coalesce and gather material from these disks predict that planets’ motions would further twist the gas around them like swirling skirts, pinpointing a planet’s location (SN: 5/11/18). Now, Di Folco and colleagues have used infrared observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and the Very Large Telescope, both in Chile, to find a spiral and zero in on one such S-shaped twist around AB Aurigae....