Published Online: November 04 2006 | ss20061027a1
Keywords: ASTRONOMY | France | ESO | HD 97048 | flared disk | IR | Planet formation |
Planet baby face
ASTRONOMY: We have the first image of a flared disk with a young star HD 97048 who is 2.5 times the mass of Sun. Researchers from France and the Netherlands deduced that the debris disc, 12 times larger than our solar system, should be a stellar nursery with possible planet babies only about 3 days old if we regard our 4.6-billion-years-old Sun as only 40 years old.
Scidea TOS
tos20061012
Science 314, 621-623 (2006). | Abs . Figure . Full . Supp.Info.
doi: 10.1126/science.1131436. AAAS Printed 20061027
Science Express Online 20060928
Planet baby face
Planet: baby face blue 2006, by Lin PU
Credit: Scidea Art 2006 Source: www.ScideaNews.com
Using a 8.2-meter telescope with angular resolution as high as 0.3 arcsec at 10 micron wavelength, i.e. corresponding to a resolution of 500 m on the Moon, Pierre-Olivier Lagage and his colleagues in France and the Netherlands report a portrait (centered on the IR emission bands at 8.6 µm) of the debris disc surrounding the young star HD 97048 who is only a few millions years old estimated from evolutionary tracks [ 1 ].
In an astronomic scale, the disc is our neighbor which the distance is only 600 light-years. With well-known astronomic observations and principles, the researchers deduced that the debris disc should be a stellar nursery with planet babies only about 3 days old if we regard our 4.6-billion-years-old Sun as only 40 years old. However, the baby HD 97048, the gravitational centre of the flared disc containing large amounts of collision-induced fragments (> 50 Earth masses) and gases (>10 Jupiter masses), has a temperature of 10,000 K, and 40 times more luminous than the Sun and is 2.5 times as massive.
This sparse disc is larger, at least 12 times more extended than the orbit of the farthest planet in the Solar System, Neptune [ 2 ]. Nevertheless, note that a little large mass comparing with our solar system, it is interesting to evaluate the potential for the planets' developing within HD97048's system.
* Lin Pu is in the Physics Department of Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, CHINA.
References
| 1 | Lagage, P. O., Doucet, C., Pantin, E., Habart, E., Duchêne, G., Ménard, F., Pinte, C., Charnoz, S. & Pel, J. W. Anatomy of a Flaring Proto-Planetary Disk Around a Young Intermediate-Mass Star. Science 314 (5799), 621-623 (2006). ♦ doi:10.1126/science.1131436 | CrossRef ♦ AAAS :: Abs . Figure . Full . Supp. Info. |
| 2 | ESO News: watching how planets form, 28 September 2006. | Full | |
Citation
L. PU
Lin PU. Planet baby face. Scidea Sketch 1 (1), ss20061027a1 (2007).
♦ doi: 10.3128/ ss20061027a1 | Scidea :: Abs . Full | CrossRef
♦ Scidea Sketch :: ISSN: 1992 - 8548