UA astronomers capture details of young planets using an advanced adaptive optics instrument
A team of astronomers from the University of Arizona has captured, with unprecedented detail, young planets forming around a distant star. This was made possible by a powerful new adaptive optics instrument called MagAO-X, installed on the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
The instrument corrects atmospheric distortion in real time, allowing astronomers to capture images far sharper than those from even space telescopes like Hubble or the James Webb Space Telescope. The team focused their observations on the PDS 70 system, located about 370 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
There, two forming planets, PDS 70 b and PDS 70 c, are surrounded by dusty disks, likely to evolve into moons over time. Thanks to MagAO-X, astronomers were able to see these disks with extraordinary clarity, something that had never been done before.
The brightness of these planets has also changed significantly over the past few years. PDS 70 b has dimmed to a fifth of its previous brightness, while PDS 70 c has doubled in brightness. This is likely due to changes in how much hydrogen gas each planet is accumulating: one is apparently slowing down, while the other is actively growing.
These findings shed new light on how planets form and offer insights into the early stages of our own solar system. According to the researchers, systems like PDS 70 may have resembled ours in its infancy.
This research also highlights the power of ground-based telescopes equipped with cutting-edge technology. The University of Arizona team plans to continue searching for more forming planets using MagAO-X—and in the future, even larger telescopes.
Source: The Daily Wildcat — “UA astronomers capture details of young planets using an advanced adaptive optics instrument”
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