PDS 70
Context
- Scientists for the first time have spotted a moon-forming region around a planet beyond our solar system - a Jupiter-like world surrounded by a disc of gas and dust massive enough that it could spawn three moons the size of the one orbiting Earth.
About
- The researchers used the ALMA observatory in Chile's Atacama desert to detect the disc of swirling material accumulating around one of two newborn planets seen orbiting a young star called PDS 70, located a relatively close 370 light years from Earth.
- A light year is the distance light travels in a year, about 9.5 trillion km.
- It is called a circumplanetary disc, and it is from these that moons are born.
- The orange-colored star PDS 70, roughly the same mass as our Sun, is about 5 million years old.
- The two planets are even younger. Both planets are similar (although larger) to Jupiter, a gas giant.
- It was around one of the two planets, called PDS 70c, that a moon-forming disc was observed.
- Researchers have now confirmed initial evidence of a disc around this planet.
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