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ESO: Observation of planetary clumping around a young star

A new report from the  European Southern Observatory (ESO):

New image reveals secrets of planet birth

At the centre of this image is the young star V960 Mon, located over 5000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. Dusty material with potential to form planets surrounds the star.  Observations obtained using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s VLT, represented in yellow in this image, show that the dusty material orbiting the young star is assembling together in a series of intricate spiral arms extending to distances greater than the entire Solar System.  Meanwhile, the blue regions represent data obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. The ALMA data peers deeper into the structure of the spiral arms, revealing large dusty clumps that could contract and collapse to form giant planets roughly the size of Jupiter via a process known as “gravitational instability”.

A spectacular new image released today by the European Southern Observatory gives us clues about how planets as massive as Jupiter could form. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have detected large dusty clumps, close to a young star, that could collapse to create giant planets.

This discovery is truly captivating as it marks the very first detection of clumps around a young star that have the potential to give rise to giant planets,

says Alice Zurlo, a researcher at the Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, involved in the observations.

This image of the young star V960 Mon and surrounding dusty material was obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. Large dusty clumps with masses similar to that of planets are visible here as blue blobs. These clumps could contract and collapse via a process known as “gravitational instability” to form giant planets roughly the size of Jupiter.

The work is based on a mesmerising picture obtained with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s VLT that features fascinating detail of the material around the star V960 Mon. This young star is located over 5000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros and attracted astronomers’ attention when it suddenly increased its brightness more than twenty times in 2014. SPHERE observations taken shortly after the onset of this brightness ‘outburst’ revealed that the material orbiting V960 Mon is assembling together in a series of intricate spiral arms extending over distances bigger than the entire Solar System.

This finding then motivated astronomers to analyse archive observations of the same system made with ALMA, in which ESO is a partner. The VLT observations probe the surface of the dusty material around the star, while ALMA can peer deeper into its structure.

With ALMA, it became apparent that the spiral arms are undergoing fragmentation, resulting in the formation of clumps with masses akin to those of planets,”

says Zurlo.

Astronomers believe that giant planets form either by ‘core accretion’, when dust grains come together, or by ‘gravitational instability’, when large fragments of the material around a star contract and collapse. While researchers have previously found evidence for the first of these scenarios, support for the latter has been scant.

No one had ever seen a real observation of gravitational instability happening at planetary scales — until now,”

says Philipp Weber, a researcher at the University of Santiago, Chile, who led the study published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Our group has been searching for signs of how planets form for over ten years, and we couldn’t be more thrilled about this incredible discovery,”

says team-member Sebastián Pérez from the University of Santiago, Chile.

ESO instruments will help astronomers unveil more details of this captivating planetary system in the making, and ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will play a key role. Currently under construction in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the ELT will be able to observe the system in greater detail than ever before, collecting crucial information about it.

The ELT will enable the exploration of the chemical complexity surrounding these clumps, helping us find out more about the composition of the material from which potential planets are forming,”

concludes Weber.

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ESO: Hidden views of vast stellar nurseries

A new report from the European Space Observatory (ESO):

ESO telescope reveals hidden views
of vast stellar nurseries

This image shows the L1688 region in the Ophiuchus constellation. New stars are born in the colourful clouds of gas and dust seen here. The infrared observations underlying this image reveal new details in the star-forming regions that are usually obscured by the clouds of dust. The image was produced with data collected by the VIRCAM instrument, which is attached to the VISTA telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The observations were done as part of the VISIONS survey, which will allow astronomers to better understand how stars form in these dust-enshrouded regions. This 520-million-pixel image can be explored in more detail with this zoomable version.

Using ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), astronomers have created a vast infrared atlas of five nearby stellar nurseries by piecing together more than one million images. These large mosaics reveal young stars in the making, embedded in thick clouds of dust. Thanks to these observations, astronomers have a unique tool with which to decipher the complex puzzle of stellar birth.

In these images we can detect even the faintest sources of light, like stars far less massive than the Sun, revealing objects that no one has ever seen before,

says Stefan Meingast, an astronomer at the University of Vienna in Austria and lead author of the new study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

This will allow us to understand the processes that transform gas and dust into stars.

Stars form when clouds of gas and dust collapse under their own gravity, but the details of how this happens are not fully understood. How many stars are born out of a cloud? How massive are they? How many stars will also have planets?

To answer these questions, Meingast’s team surveyed five nearby star-forming regions with the VISTA telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Using VISTA’s infrared camera VIRCAM, the team captured light coming from deep inside the clouds of dust.

The dust obscures these young stars from our view, making them virtually invisible to our eyes. Only at infrared wavelengths can we look deep into these clouds, studying the stars in the making,”

explains Alena Rottensteiner, a PhD student also at the University of Vienna and co-author of the study.

This image shows the HH 909 A object in the Chamaeleon constellation. New stars are born in the colourful clouds of gas and dust seen here. The infrared observations underlying this image reveal new details in the star-forming regions that are usually obscured by the clouds of dust. The image was produced with data collected by the VIRCAM instrument, which is attached to the VISTA telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The observations were done as part of the VISIONS survey, which will allow astronomers to better understand how stars form in these dust-enshrouded regions.

The survey, called VISIONS, observed star-forming regions in the constellations of Orion, Ophiuchus, Chamaeleon, Corona Australis and Lupus. These regions are less than 1500 light-years away and so large that they span a huge area in the sky. The diameter of VIRCAM’s field of view is as wide as three full Moons, which makes it uniquely suited to map these immensely big regions.

This image shows the IRAS 11051-7706 object in the Chamaeleon constellation. New stars are born in the colourful clouds of gas and dust seen here. The infrared observations underlying the image reveal new details in the star-forming regions that are usually obscured by the clouds of dust. The image was produced with data collected by the VIRCAM instrument, which is attached to the VISTA telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The observations were done as part of the VISIONS survey, which will allow astronomers to better understand how stars form in these dust-enshrouded regions.

The team obtained more than one million images over a period of five years. The individual images were then pieced together into the large mosaics released here, revealing vast cosmic landscapes. These detailed panoramas feature dark patches of dust, glowing clouds, newly-born stars and the distant background stars of the Milky Way.

Since the same areas were observed repeatedly, the VISIONS data will also allow astronomers to study how young stars move.

With VISIONS we monitor these baby stars over several years, allowing us to measure their motion and learn how they leave their parent clouds,

explains João Alves, an astronomer at the University of Vienna and Principal Investigator of VISIONS. This is not an easy feat, as the apparent shift of these stars as seen from Earth is as small as the width of a human hair seen from 10 kilometres away. These measurements of stellar motions complement those obtained by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission at visible wavelengths, where young stars are hidden by thick veils of dust.

A dark cloud of cosmic dust snakes across this spectacular image, illuminated by the brilliant light of new stars. This dense cloud is a star-forming region called Lupus 3, where dazzlingly hot stars are born from collapsing masses of gas and dust. This image was created from images taken using the VLT Survey Telescope and the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope. Click here for a wider version of this image.

The VISIONS atlas will keep astronomers busy for years to come.

There is tremendous long-lasting value for the astronomical community here, which is why ESO steers Public Surveys like VISIONS,”

says Monika Petr-Gotzens, an astronomer at ESO in Garching, Germany, and co-author of this study. Moreover, VISIONS will set the groundwork for future observations with other telescopes such as ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in Chile and set to start operating later this decade.

The ELT will allow us to zoom into specific regions with unprecedented detail, giving us a never-seen-before close-up view of individual stars that are currently forming there,

concludes Meingast.

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ESO: DART asteroid impact debris analyzed with VLT

The latest report from the European Southern Observatory (ESO):

First results from ESO telescopes
on the aftermath of DART’s asteroid impact

This series of images, taken with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows the evolution of the cloud of debris that was ejected when NASA’s DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. The first image was taken on 26 September 2022, just before the impact, and the last one was taken almost one month later on 25 October. Over this period several structures developed: clumps, spirals, and a long tail of dust pushed away by the Sun’s radiation. The white arrow in each panel marks the direction of the Sun. Dimorphos orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos. The white horizontal bar corresponds to 500 kilometres, but the asteroids are only 1 kilometre apart, so they can’t be discerned in these images. The background streaks seen here are due to the apparent movement of the background stars during the observations while the telescope was tracking the asteroid pair.

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), two teams of astronomers have observed the aftermath of the collision between NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft and the asteroid Dimorphos. The controlled impact was a test of planetary defence, but also gave astronomers a unique opportunity to learn more about the asteroid’s composition from the expelled material.

On 26 September 2022 the DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos in a controlled test of our asteroid deflection capabilities. The impact took place 11 million kilometres away from Earth, close enough to be observed in detail with many telescopes. All four 8.2-metre telescopes of ESO’s VLT in Chile observed the aftermath of the impact, and the first results of these VLT observations have now been published in two papers.

”Asteroids are some of the most basic relics of what all the planets and moons in our Solar System were created from,”

says Brian Murphy, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh in the UK and co-author of one of the studies. Studying the cloud of material ejected after DART’s impact can therefore tell us about how our Solar System formed.

“Impacts between asteroids happen naturally, but you never know it in advance,”

continues Cyrielle Opitom, an astronomer also at the University of Edinburgh and lead author of one of the articles.

“DART is a really great opportunity to study a controlled impact, almost as in a laboratory.”

Opitom and her team followed the evolution of the cloud of debris for a month with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at ESO’s VLT. They found that the ejected cloud was bluer than the asteroid itself was before the impact, indicating that the cloud could be made of very fine particles. In the hours and days that followed the impact other structures developed: clumps, spirals and a long tail pushed away by the Sun’s radiation. The spirals and tail were redder than the initial cloud, and so could be made of larger particles.

MUSE allowed Opitom’s team to break up the light from the cloud into a rainbow-like pattern and look for the chemical fingerprints of different gases. In particular, they searched for oxygen and water coming from ice exposed by the impact. But they found nothing.

”Asteroids are not expected to contain significant amounts of ice, so detecting any trace of water would have been a real surprise,”

explains Opitom. They also looked for traces of the propellant of the DART spacecraft, but found none.

”We knew it was a long shot,” she says, “as the amount of gas that would be left in the tanks from the propulsion system would not be huge. Furthermore, some of it would have travelled too far to detect it with MUSE by the time we started observing.”

Another team, led by Stefano Bagnulo, an astronomer at the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in the UK, studied how the DART impact altered the surface of the asteroid.

“When we observe the objects in our Solar System, we are looking at the sunlight that is scattered by their surface or by their atmosphere, which becomes partially polarised,” 

explains Bagnulo. This means that light waves oscillate along a preferred direction rather than randomly.

“Tracking how the polarisation changes with the orientation of the asteroid relative to us and the Sun reveals the structure and composition of its surface.”

Bagnulo and his colleagues used the FOcal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument at the VLT to monitor the asteroid, and found that the level of polarisation suddenly dropped after the impact. At the same time, the overall brightness of the system increased. One possible explanation is that the impact exposed more pristine material from the interior of the asteroid.

”Maybe the material excavated by the impact was intrinsically brighter and less polarising than the material on the surface, because it was never exposed to solar wind and solar radiation,”

says Bagnulo.

Another possibility is that the impact destroyed particles on the surface, thus ejecting much smaller ones into the cloud of debris.

”We know that under certain circumstances, smaller fragments are more efficient at reflecting light and less efficient at polarising it,”

explains Zuri Gray, a PhD student also at the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium.

The studies by the teams led by Bagnulo and Opitom show the potential of the VLT when its different instruments work together. In fact, in addition to MUSE and FORS2, the aftermath of the impact was observed with two other VLT instruments, and analysis of these data is ongoing.

“This research took advantage of a unique opportunity when NASA impacted an asteroid,” concludes Opitom, “so it cannot be repeated by any future facility. This makes the data obtained with the VLT around the time of impact extremely precious when it comes to better understanding the nature of asteroids.”

This artist’s illustration shows the ejection of a cloud of debris after NASA’s DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. The image was created with the help of the close-up photographs of Dimorphos that the DRACO camera on the DART spacecraft took right before the impact. The DART spacecraft collided with Dimorphos at a speed of over 6 kilometres per second (about 22 000 kilometres per hour). After the impact several telescopes observed the evolution of the cloud of debris, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope.

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The Space Show this week – Nov.28.2022

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

1. Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2022; 7 pm PST (9 pm CST, 10 pm EST): We welcome Tom Gardner to the program from Advanced Space to discuss the Capstone Project – Cubesats and the Moon!

2. Hotel Mars – Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022; 1:00 pm PST (3:00 pm CST, 4:00 pm EST): Rick Fisher will talk with John Batchelor and Dr. David Livingston about China’s space program, rockets and more!

3. Friday, Dec.2, 2022; 9:30-11 am PST (11:30 am-1 pm CST, 12:30-2 pm EST): We welcome back Dr. Pete Worden for Breakthrough Prize updates and much much more. Don’t miss this discussion!

4. Sunday, Dec.4, 2022; 12-1:30 pm PST (2-3:30 pm CST, 3-4:30 pm EST): We welcome Gurbir Singh back to the show regarding his new book.

The Space Show Asks For Your Support For Our Annual Campaign

Nov. 25, 2022

Please support The Space Show during our Annual Campaign which makes possible our 2023 programming year.  We are 100% listener supported so your help .  is essential to Space Show programming.   If you like the programming, our guests, our format which connects you real time to the guests and other listeners, plus our blog for archive listeners that also connects you with our guests, then please donate and support us.  Your support is very important to us and makes possible our programming for the new year starting in January.  Use the PayPal link at the top of our home page, www.thespaceshow.com, or if you prefer mailing a check, please make it payable to One Giant Leap Foundation, C/O Dr. David Livingston, 11035 Lavender Hill Dr, Ste. 160-306, Las Vegas, NV  89135.

The Space Show thanks you. We look forward to working with you for 2023 as guests, listeners, getting your guest and programming suggestions and feedback.

All the best,

Dr. David Livingston, Host

Some recent shows:

** Friday, Nov.18.2022 – Brad Bergan discussed

his excellent new book, Space Race 2.0: SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, NASA, and the Privatization of the Final Frontier [Amazon commission link].  Multiple topics from the book [were covered] plus we asked Brad many questions for this thoughts and opinions regarding space, commercial space and related topics.

** Thursday, Nov.17.2022 Robert (Sam) Wilson, a policy analyst at The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy, discussed “his paper on the defense space budget and the congressional action that has followed, which particularly focuses on missile warning and tracking“.

** Tuesday, Nov.15.2022Dr. John Brandenburg returned to the show “to update us with some new information pertaining to his hypothesis about large nuclear bomb like explosions on Mars hundreds of million years ago“.

** See also:
* The Space Show Archives
* The Space Show Newsletter
* The Space Show Shop

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.

The Space Show - David Livingston
The Space Show – Dr. David Livingston

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The Space Show this week – Nov.14.2022

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

1. Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022; 7 pm PST (9 pm CST, 10 pm EST): We welcome back Dr. John Brandenburg who has updates for us.

2. Hotel Mars – Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022; 1:00 pm PST (3:00 pm CST, 4:00 pm EST): TBD. Check the Upcoming Show Menu at www.thespaceshow.com for  updates on scheduling.

3. Thursday, Nov.17.2022; 7:00 pm PST (9:00 pm CST; 10:00 pm EST): We welcome back Robert (Sam) Wilson to discuss his paper focusing on defense space budget and the congressional action that has followed, which particularly focuses on missile warning and tracking. See the paper at Issue Brief: Fiscal Year 2023 Space Force Budget Analysis: Missile Warning and Tracking Looms Large | Aerospace Center for Space Policy and Strategy.

4. Friday, Nov.18, 2022; 9:30-11 am PST (11:30 am-1 pm CST, 12:30-2 pm EST): We welcome Brad Bergan re his new book, “Space Race 2.0.

5. Sunday, Nov.20, 2022; 12-1:30 pm PST (2-3:30 pm CST, 3-4:30 pm EST): There will be no show today. Today starts our annual fund raising campaign. Please see our kickoff letter on the Upcoming Show web page for this date. While away for Thanksgiving week in Ca, I will continue to provide updated show and campaign information on the Upcoming Show Menu. Live broadcasting resumes Tuesday, Nov. 29. All missed programs will be made up by adding in special programs prior to the end of the year.

Some recent shows:

** Sunday, Nov.13.2022Keith Henson came

back after a decade or so to talk for two hours with us about radiation for humans on the Moon, why go to the Moon, tourism, settlement, then SSP, an economic analysis and much more. Great calls, emails, a very good two hour discussion.

** Hotel Mars – Wednesday, Nov. 9.2022Anatoly Zak spoke with John Batchelor and Dr. David Livingston about Russia “and the Lunar Gateway, Roscosmos, the Orel crewed spaceship“.

** Tuesday, Nov.8.2022Robert Zimmerman returned for a “look at some key space events for 2022, a look toward 2023, company reviews, a look at the records being made in the launch industry this year, commercial space and national security space commentary, space economics and much more“.

** Sunday, Nov.6.2022 – The Open Lineshad multiple callers for this program, both to discuss space topics plus to tell us their story of their interactions with The Space Show“.

** Friday, Nov.4.2022Andrew Chaninwas back with us to discuss the UFO EFT, investing in commercial space, space as an essential part of our economy, rising interest rates and capital flow to the industry plus more“.

** See also:
* The Space Show Archives
* The Space Show Newsletter
* The Space Show Shop

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.

The Space Show - David Livingston
The Space Show – Dr. David Livingston

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