Cheops discovers late bloomer from another era

The four planets of LHS 1903
Artist impression of the planetary system around the star LHS 1903
Credit: ESA | Acknowledgements: ATG Europe
Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence (content can be used under either licence)

In brief

Scientists used the European Space Agency's Cheops satellite to discover that the planetary system around the star LHS 1903 challenges current planet formation theories with the unusual order of its planets. Surprisingly, the most distant outer planet might be rocky and seems to have formed later – in a different environment than the other planets around the star.

In-depth

Many Vile Earthlings Munch Jam Sandwiches Under Newspapers and My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos. What sounds like gibberish half-sentences are memory aids taught to children to help remember the order of the planets in our Solar System: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The eight familiar planets can be sorted into two different types: rocky and gaseous. The inner planets that are closest to the Sun – Mercury to Mars – are rocky, and the outer planets – Jupiter to Neptune – are gaseous.

This general pattern, that planetary systems form with rocky planets closer to their star, followed by gaseous planets as the outer bodies, has been commonly observed across the Universe. It is what our current planet formation theories predict and what observations have widely confirmed to be true.

That was until scientists took a closer look at the planetary system around a star called LHS 1903 with ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (Cheops). What they have just discovered might flip our understanding of how planets form upside down.

LHS 1903 is a small red M-dwarf star that is cooler and shines less brightly than our Sun. Thomas Wilson from the University of Warwick in the UK and his international team combined the efforts of various telescopes in space and on Earth to classify three planets that they had spotted orbiting LHS 1903. They were able to conclude that the innermost planet seemed to be rocky, and the two that followed it gaseous.

So far, so normal. It wasn’t until Thomas and his colleagues were analysing observations made by ESA’s Cheops, that they discovered something strange: the data showed a small fourth planet, furthest from LHS 1903. And upon closer inspection, the scientists were surprised to discover that this planet seems to be rocky!

“That makes this an inside-out system, with a planet order of rocky-gaseous-gaseous-and then rocky again. Rocky planets don’t usually form so far away from their home star,” says Thomas.

Cheops open questions: How do planets form?
Credit: ESA
Licence: ESA Standard Licence

Current planet formation theories predict that the inner planets in a system are small and rocky, because close to the star the radiation is so powerful that it sweeps away most of the gas around the planets’ rocky core. Further away from the star, in the outer part of a planetary system, the conditions are cool enough for a thick atmosphere to gather into a gaseous planet.

ESA’s Cheops project scientist Maximilian Günther is enthusiastic: “Much about how planets form and evolve is still a mystery. Finding clues like this one for solving this puzzle is precisely what Cheops set out to do.”

Cheops open questions: How do planets evolve?

Credit: ESA 

Born to be weird?

Scientists are not quick to say that an established theory needs to be reconsidered, based on a single contradictory observation. So, Thomas and his colleagues set out to explore various explanations for why this strange rocky planet breaks the familiar pattern.

Was the planet, for example, at some point in its past hit by a giant asteroid, comet, or another big object, that blew away its atmosphere? Or had the planets around LHS 1903 swapped places at some point during their evolution? After testing these scenarios through simulations and calculations of the planets’ orbital times, the team of scientists ruled them out.

Instead, their investigation led them to a more intriguing explanation: the planets may have formed one after the other, instead of at the same time. According to our current understanding, planets form from discs of gas and dust (protoplanetary discs) by clumping into planetary embryos at roughly the same time. These clumps then evolve into planets of different sizes and compositions over millions of years.

In contrast, here Thomas and his team discovered a planetary system where the star might have given birth to its four planets one after the other, instead of bearing quadruplets at once. This idea – known as inside-out planet formation – was proposed by scientists as a theory about a decade ago, but until now, never has the evidence been so strong.

A late bloomer defying expectations

This conclusion comes with an additional catch: Much like how our younger siblings are growing up in a world that is different from the one of our childhoods, this small rocky planet seems to have evolved and formed in a very different environment than its older sibling-planets.

“By the time this outer planet formed, the system may have already run out of gas, which is considered vital for planet formation. Yet here is a small, rocky world, defying expectations. It seems that we have found first evidence for a planet which formed in what we call a gas-depleted environment”, says Thomas.

The small rocky world is either an odd outlier, or the first evidence for a trend we hadn’t known about yet. Either way, its discovery begs for an explanation that lies beyond our usual planet formation theories.

Our Solar System as a one-size-fits-all

“Historically, our planet formation theories are based on what we see and know about our Solar System,” Isabel Rebollido who is currently a Research Fellow at ESA points out. “As we are seeing more and more different exoplanet systems, we are starting to revisit these theories.”

As our instruments improve, we continue to discover more and more ‘weird’ planetary systems in the vastness of space. They force us to question our understanding and make us reconsider established theories of planet formation. Ultimately, these discoveries are helping us learn about how our Solar System fits into the big family of diverse planetary systems. They make us wonder how special the order of the planets is that we teach our children, and if maybe it is our home Solar System that is the weird one after all.

Source: ESA/Science Exploration

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Notes for editors

'Gas-depleted planet formation occurred in the four-planet system around the red dwarf LHS 1903' by T. Wilson et al. is published in Science on 12 February 2026. DOI:10.1126/science.adl2348

For more information, please contact:

ESA Media relations
media@esa.int

More about Cheops

Cheops is an ESA mission developed in partnership with Switzerland, with a dedicated consortium led by the University of Bern, and with important contributions from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

ESA is the Cheops mission architect, responsible for procurement and testing of the satellite, the launch and early operations phase, and in-orbit commissioning, as well as the Guest Observers’ Programme through which scientists world-wide can apply to observe with Cheops. The consortium of 11 ESA Member States led by Switzerland provided essential elements of the mission. The prime contractor for the design and construction of the spacecraft is Airbus Defence and Space in Madrid, Spain.

The Cheops mission consortium runs the Mission Operations Centre located at INTA, in Torrejón de Ardoz near Madrid, Spain, and the Science Operations Centre, located at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

For more information, visit: https://www.esa.int/Cheops

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Massive Cloud With Metallic Winds Discovered Orbiting Mystery Object

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Artist’s Illustration of Cloudy Disk Orbiting Distant Star

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Starry Night, Laser Light

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Videos


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Gemini South at Cerro Pachón

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Astronomers using the Gemini South telescope achieve unprecedented detection of vaporized metals within a dusty, gaseous cloud during rare stellar occultation

Sweeping winds of vaporized metals have been found in a massive cloud that dimmed the light of a star for nearly nine months. This discovery, made with the Gemini South telescope in Chile, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, offers a rare glimpse into the chaotic and dynamic processes still shaping planetary systems long after their formation.

In September 2024, a star 3000 light-years away suddenly became 40 times dimmer than usual, and remained so until May 2025. The star, J0705+0612, is similar to our Sun, so its stark dip in brightness caught the attention of Nadia Zakamska, professor of astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University. “Stars like the Sun don’t just stop shining for no reason,” she says, “so dramatic dimming events like this are very rare.”

Recognizing the opportunity to study such an event over many months, Zakamska and her team initiated observations with the Gemini South telescope, located on Cerro Pachón in Chile, as well as the Apache Point Observatory 3.5-meter telescope and the 6.5 meter Magellan Telescopes. The findings are published in a paper appearing in The Astronomical Journal.

By combining their observations with archival data on J0705+0612 [1], the team determined the star had been occulted, or temporarily obscured by, a vast, slow-moving, cloud of gas and dust. They estimate the cloud is about two billion kilometers (1.2 billion miles) from its host star and roughly 200 million kilometers (120 million miles) in diameter.

The data indicate that this cloud is gravitationally bound to a secondary object that itself orbits the star in the outer reaches of its planetary system. While the nature of this object remains unknown, it must be massive enough to hold the cloud together. Observations constrain it to be at least a few times the mass of Jupiter, though it could be larger. Possibilities range from a planet to a brown dwarf to an extremely low-mass star.

If the mystery object is a star, the cloud would be classified as a circumsecondary disk — a debris disk orbiting the less massive member of a binary system. If the object is a planet, it would be a circumplanetary disk. In either case, directly observing a star being occulted by a disk surrounding a secondary object is exceptionally rare, with only a handful of known examples.

To investigate the cloud’s composition, the team used Gemini South’s cutting-edge instrument, the Gemini High-resolution Optical SpecTrograph (GHOST). In March 2025, GHOST observed the occultation for just over two hours, dispersing the light from the star into a spectrum that reveals the chemical elements present in the intervening material.

“When I started observing the occultation with spectroscopy, I was hoping to unveil something about the chemical composition of the cloud, as no such measurements had been done before. But the result exceeded all my expectations,” says Zakamska.

The GHOST data revealed multiple metals — elements heavier than helium — within the cloud. More remarkably, the high precision of the spectra allowed the team to directly measure how the gas is moving in three dimensions. This marks the first time astronomers have measured the internal gas motions of a disk orbiting a secondary object such as a planet or low-mass star. The observations show a dynamic environment with winds of gaseous metals, including iron and calcium.

“The sensitivity of GHOST allowed us to not only detect the gas in this cloud, but to actually measure how it is moving,” says Zakamska. “That’s something we’ve never been able to do before in a system like this.”

“This study illustrates the considerable power of Gemini’s newest facility instrument, GHOST,” notes Chris Davis, NSF Program Director for NOIRLab, “and further highlights one of Gemini’s great strengths — rapidly responding to transient events like this occultation.”

The precise measurements of the speed and direction of the wind show that the cloud is moving separate from its host star. This, combined with how long the occultation lasted, further confirm that the occulter is a disk around a secondary object and that it orbits in the outer reaches of its host star’s stellar system.

The source shows infrared excess, typically associated with disks around young stars. However, J0705+0612 is more than two billion years old, meaning the disk is unlikely to be leftover debris from the system’s early planet formation stage. So how did it form?

Zakamska proposes that it originated after two planets collided with each other in the outer reaches of this star’s planetary system, ejecting dust, rocks, and debris and forming the massive cloud now seen passing in front of the star.

The discovery highlights how new technology enables new insights into the Universe. GHOST has opened a new window into studying hidden phenomena in distant star systems, and the findings provide valuable clues about the long-term evolution of planetary systems and how disks can form around old stars.

“This event shows us that even in mature planetary systems, dramatic, large-scale collisions can still occur,” says Zakamska. “It’s a vivid reminder that the Universe is far from static — it’s an ongoing story of creation, destruction, and transformation.”

Source: NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab)/News

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Notes

[1] A study using archival data from Harvard found that J0705+0612 underwent two other similar dimming events in 1937 and 1981, establishing a 44-year period.

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More information

This research was presented in a paper titled “ASASSN-24fw: Candidate Gas-rich Circumsecondary Disk Occultation of a Main-sequence Star” appearing in The Astronomical Journal. DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ae1fd9

The team is composed of Nadia L. Zakamska (Johns Hopkins University, Institute for Advanced Study), Gautham A. Pallathadka (Johns Hopkins University), Dmitry Bizyaev (New Mexico State University, Moscow State University), Jaroslav Merc (Charles University, Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands), James E. Owen (Imperial College London), Henrique Reggiani (Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), Kevin C. Schlaufman (Johns Hopkins University), Karolina Bąkowska (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), Sławomir Bednarz (Silesian University of Technology), Krzysztof Bernacki (Silesian University of Technology), Agnieszka Gurgul (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), Kirsten R. Hall (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian), Franz-Josef Hambsch (Association for Astronomy, Meteorology, Geophysics and Related Sciences, German Association for Variable Stars), Barbara Joachimczyk (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), Krzysztof Kotysz (University of Warsaw, University of Wrocław), Sebastian Kurowski (Jagiellonian University), Alexios Liakos (National Observatory of Athens), Przemysław J. Mikołajczyk (University of Warsaw, National Centre for Nuclear Research, University of Wrocław), Erika Pakštienė (Vilnius University), Grzegorz Pojmański (University of Warsaw), Adam Popowicz (Silesian University of Technology), Daniel E. Reichart (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Łukasz Wyrzykowski (University of Warsaw, National Centre for Nuclear Research), Justas Zdanavičius (Vilnius University), Michał Żejmo (University of Zielona Gora), Paweł Zieliński (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), and Staszek Zola (Jagiellonian University).

NSF NOIRLab, the U.S. National Science Foundation center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the International Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brazil, MINCyT–Argentina, and KASI–Republic of Korea), NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (in cooperation with DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.

The scientific community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on I’oligam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence of I’oligam Du’ag to the Tohono O’odham Nation, and Maunakea to the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) community.

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Links

• Read the paper: ASASSN-24fw: Candidate Gas-rich Circumsecondary Disk Occultation of a Main-sequence Star
• Photos of the Gemini South telescope
• Videos of the Gemini South telescope
• Check out other NOIRLab Science Releases

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Contacts:

Nadia Zakamska
Johns Hopkins University
Email: zakamska@jhu.edu

Josie Fenske
Public Information Officer
NSF NOIRLab
Email: josie.fenske@noirlab.edu

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NASA's Webb Peers Deeper into Mysterious Flame Nebula

Flame Nebula: Hubble and Webb Observations

Credits/Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Michael Meyer (University of Michigan), Matthew De Furio (UT Austin), Massimo Robberto (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Low Mass Objects within the Flame Nebula (NIRCam Image)
Credits/Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Michael Meyer (University of Michigan)

Flame Nebula: Hubble and Webb Observations (Compass Image)

Credits/Image/; NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Michael Meyer (University of Michigan), Matthew De Furio (UT Austin), Massimo Robberto (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Flame Nebula (Hubble and Webb Comparison) - Videos
Credits/Video: NASA, ESA, CSA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

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The Flame Nebula, located about 1,400 light-years away from Earth, is a hotbed of star formation less than 1 million years old. Within the Flame Nebula, there are objects so small that their cores will never be able to fuse hydrogen like full-fledged stars — brown dwarfs.

Brown dwarfs, often called “failed stars,” over time become very dim and much cooler than stars. These factors make observing brown dwarfs with most telescopes difficult, if not impossible, even at cosmically short distances from the Sun. When they are very young, however, they are still relatively warmer and brighter and therefore easier to observe despite the obscuring, dense dust and gas that comprises the Flame Nebula in this case.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can pierce this dense, dusty region and see the faint infrared glow from young brown dwarfs. A team of astronomers used this capability to explore the lowest mass limit of brown dwarfs within the Flame Nebula. The result, they found, were free-floating objects roughly two to three times the mass of Jupiter, although they were sensitive down to 0.5 times the mass of Jupiter.

“The goal of this project was to explore the fundamental low-mass limit of the star and brown dwarf formation process. With Webb, we're able to probe the faintest and lowest mass objects,” said lead study author Matthew De Furio of the University of Texas at Austin.

Smaller Fragments

The low-mass limit the team sought is set by a process called fragmentation. In this process large molecular clouds, from which both stars and brown dwarfs are born, break apart into smaller and smaller units, or fragments.

Fragmentation is highly dependent on several factors with the balance between temperature, thermal pressure, and gravity being among the most important. More specifically, as fragments contract under the force of gravity, their cores heat up. If a core is massive enough, it will begin to fuse hydrogen. The outward pressure created by that fusion counteracts gravity, stopping collapse and stabilizing the object (then known as a star). However, fragments whose cores are not compact and hot enough to burn hydrogen continue to contract as long as they radiate away their internal heat.

“The cooling of these clouds is important because if you have enough internal energy, it will fight that gravity,” says Michael Meyer of the University of Michigan. “If the clouds cool efficiently, they collapse and break apart.”

Fragmentation stops when a fragment becomes opaque enough to reabsorb its own radiation, thereby stopping the cooling and preventing further collapse. Theories placed the lower limit of these fragments anywhere between one and ten Jupiter masses. This study significantly shrinks that range as Webb’s census counted up fragments of different masses within the nebula.

“As found in many previous studies, as you go to lower masses, you actually get more objects up to about ten times the mass of Jupiter. In our study with the James Webb Space Telescope, we are sensitive down to 0.5 times the mass of Jupiter, and we are finding significantly fewer and fewer things as you go below ten times the mass of Jupiter,” De Furio explained. “We find fewer five-Jupiter-mass objects than ten-Jupiter-mass objects, and we find way fewer three-Jupiter-mass objects than five-Jupiter-mass objects. We don’t really find any objects below two or three Jupiter masses, and we expect to see them if they are there, so we are hypothesizing that this could be the limit itself.”

Meyer added, “Webb, for the first time, has been able to probe up to and beyond that limit. If that limit is real, there really shouldn’t be any one-Jupiter-mass objects free-floating out in our Milky Way galaxy, unless they were formed as planets and then ejected out of a planetary system.”

Building on Hubble’s Legacy

Brown dwarfs, given the difficulty of finding them, have a wealth of information to provide, particularly in star formation and planetary research given their similarities to both stars and planets. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been on the hunt for these brown dwarfs for decades.

Even though Hubble can’t observe the brown dwarfs in the Flame Nebula to as low a mass as Webb can, it was crucial in identifying candidates for further study. This study is an example of how Webb took the baton—decades of Hubble data from the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex—and enabled in-depth research.

“It's really difficult to do this work, looking at brown dwarfs down to even ten Jupiter masses, from the ground, especially in regions like this. And having existing Hubble data over the last 30 years or so allowed us to know that this is a really useful star-forming region to target. We needed to have Webb to be able to study this particular science topic,” said De Furio.

“It’s a quantum leap in our capabilities between understanding what was going on from Hubble. Webb is really opening an entirely new realm of possibilities, understanding these objects,” explained astronomer Massimo Robberto of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

This team is continuing to study the Flame Nebula, using Webb’s spectroscopic tools to further characterize the different objects within its dusty cocoon.

“There's a big overlap between the things that could be planets and the things that are very, very low mass brown dwarfs,” Meyer stated. “And that's our job in the next five years: to figure out which is which and why.”

These results have been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

Source: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope/News

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About This Release

Credits:

Media Contact:

Matthew Brown
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Permissions: Content Use Policy

Contact Us: Direct inquiries to the News Team.

Related Links and Documents

• Science Paper: Identification of a Turnover in the Initial Mass Function of a Young Stellar Cluster Down to 0.5 Jupiter Masses, PDF (4.66 MB)
• The science paper by M. De Furio et al
• The University of Michigan Press Release

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“Out of science fiction”: First 3D observations of an exoplanet’s atmosphere reveal a unique climate

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The 3D structure of the atmosphere of the exoplanet Tylos

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The 3D structure of the atmosphere of the exoplanet Tylos (labeled)

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Structure and motion of the atmosphere of the exoplanet Tylos

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ESO News | First 3D observations of an exoplanet’s atmosphere

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The different layers of the atmosphere on WASP-121b

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Astronomers have peered through the atmosphere of a planet beyond the Solar System, mapping its 3D structure for the first time. By combining all four telescope units of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), they found powerful winds carrying chemical elements like iron and titanium, creating intricate weather patterns across the planet’s atmosphere. The discovery opens the door for detailed studies of the chemical makeup and weather of other alien worlds.

“This planet’s atmosphere behaves in ways that challenge our understanding of how weather works — not just on Earth, but on all planets. It feels like something out of science fiction,” says Julia Victoria Seidel, a researcher at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile and lead author of the study, published today in Nature.

The planet, WASP-121b (also known as Tylos), is some 900 light-years away in the constellation Puppis. It’s an ultra-hot Jupiter, a gas giant orbiting its host star so closely that a year there lasts only about 30 Earth hours. Moreover, one side of the planet is scorching, as it is always facing the star, while the other side is much cooler.

The team has now probed deep inside Tylos’s atmosphere and revealed distinct winds in separate layers, forming a map of the atmosphere’s 3D structure. It’s the first time astronomers have been able to study the atmosphere of a planet outside our Solar System in such depth and detail.

“What we found was surprising: a jet stream rotates material around the planet’s equator, while a separate flow at lower levels of the atmosphere moves gas from the hot side to the cooler side. This kind of climate has never been seen before on any planet,” says Seidel, who is also a researcher at the Lagrange Laboratory, part of the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, in France. The observed jet stream spans half of the planet, gaining speed and violently churning the atmosphere high up in the sky as it crosses the hot side of Tylos. “Even the strongest hurricanes in the Solar System seem calm in comparison,” she adds.

To uncover the 3D structure of the exoplanet's atmosphere, the team used the ESPRESSO instrument on ESO’s VLT to combine the light of its four large telescope units into a single signal. This combined mode of the VLT collects four times as much light as an individual telescope unit, revealing fainter details. By observing the planet for one full transit in front of its host star, ESPRESSO was able to detect signatures of multiple chemical elements, probing different layers of the atmosphere as a result.

“The VLT enabled us to probe three different layers of the exoplanet’s atmosphere in one fell swoop,” says study co-author Leonardo A. dos Santos, an assistant astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, United States. The team tracked the movements of iron, sodium and hydrogen, which allowed them to trace winds in the deep, mid and shallow layers of the planet’s atmosphere, respectively. “It’s the kind of observation that is very challenging to do with space telescopes, highlighting the importance of ground-based observations of exoplanets,” he adds.

Interestingly, the observations also revealed the presence of titanium just below the jet stream, as highlighted in a companion study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. This was another surprise since previous observations of the planet had shown this element to be absent, possibly because it’s hidden deep in the atmosphere.

“It’s truly mind-blowing that we’re able to study details like the chemical makeup and weather patterns of a planet at such a vast distance,” says Bibiana Prinoth, a PhD student at Lund University, Sweden, and ESO, who led the companion study and is a co-author of the Nature paper.

To uncover the atmosphere of smaller, Earth-like planets, though, larger telescopes will be needed. They will include ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which is currently under construction in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and its ANDES instrument. “The ELT will be a game-changer for studying exoplanet atmospheres,” says Prinoth. “This experience makes me feel like we’re on the verge of uncovering incredible things we can only dream about now.”

Source: ESO/News

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More information

This research was presented in a paper published in the journal Nature titled “Vertical structure of an exoplanet’s atmospheric jet stream” (doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08664-1).

The team is composed of: Julia V. Seidel (European Southern Observatory, Santiago, Chile [ESO Chile]; Laboratoire Lagrange, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France [Lagrange]), Bibiana Prinoth (ESO Chile and Lund Observatory, Division of Astrophysics, Department of Physics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden [ULund]), Lorenzo Pino (INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Florence, Italy), Leonardo A. dos Santos (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA), Hritam Chakraborty (Observatoire de Genève, Département d’Astronomie, Université de Genève, Versoix, Switzerland [UNIGE]), Vivien Parmentier (Lagrange), Elyar Sedaghati (ESO Chile), Joost P. Wardenier (Département de Physique, Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets [IREx], Université de Montréal, Canada), Casper Farret Jentink (UNIGE), Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio (Centro de Astrobiología, CSIC-INTA, Madrid, Spain), Romain Allart (IREx), David Ehrenreich (UNIGE), Monika Lendl (UNIGE), Giulia Roccetti (European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany; Meteorologisches Institut, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany), Yuri Damasceno (Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal [IA-CAUP], Departamento de Fisica e Astronomia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal [FCUP]; ESO Chile), Vincent Bourrier (UNIGE), Jorge Lillo-Box (Centro de Astrobiología (CAB); CSIC-INTA, Madrid, Spain), H. Jens Hoeijmakers (ULund), Enric Pallé (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain [IAC]; Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain [IAC-ULL]), Nuno Santos (IA-CAUP and FCUP), Alejandro Suàrez Mascareño (IAC and IAC-ULL), Sergio G. Sousa (IA-CAUP), Hugo M. Tabernero (Departamento de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica & IPARCOS-UCM (Instituto de Física de Partículas y del Cosmos de la UCM), Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), and Francesco A. Pepe (UNIGE).

The companion research, uncovering the presence of titanium, was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics in a paper titled “Titanium chemistry of WASP-121 b with ESPRESSO in 4-UT mode” (doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202452405)

The team behind this paper is composed of: Bibiana Prinoth (European Southern Observatory, Santiago, Chile [ESO Chile] and Lund Observatory, Division of Astrophysics, Department of Physics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden [ULund]), Julia V. Seidel (ESO Chile; Laboratoire Lagrange, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France [Lagrange]), H. Jens Hoeijmakers (ULund), Brett M. Morris (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA), Martina Baratella (ESO Chile), Nicholas W. Borsato (ULund, School of Mathematical and physical Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia), Yuri Damasceno (Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal [IA-CAUP], Departamento de Fisica e Astronomia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal [FCUP]; ESO Chile), Vivien Parmentier (Lagrange), Daniel Kitzmann (University of Bern, Physics Institute, Division of Space Research & Planetary Sciences, Bern, Switzerland), Elyar Sedaghati (ESO Chile), Lorenzo Pino (INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Florence, Italy), Francesco Borsa (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Merate, Italy), Romain Allart (Département de Physique, Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets [IREx], Université de Montréal, Canada), Nuno Santos (IA-CAUP and FCUP), Michal Steiner (Observatoire de l'Université de Genève, Versoix, Switzerland), Alejandro Suàrez Mascareño (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain; Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain), Hugo M. Tabernero (Departamento de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica & IPARCOS-UCM (Instituto de Física de Partículas y del Cosmos de la UCM), Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio (Centro de Astrobiologia, CSIC-INTA, Madrid, Spain).

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.

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Links

• Research paper (Nature)
• Research paper (A&A)
• Photos of the VLT
• Find out more about ESO's Extremely Large Telescope on our dedicated website and press kit
• For journalists: subscribe to receive our releases under embargo in your language and apply to take part in ESO's (partly funded) 2025 strategic media visit (NEW)
• For scientists: got a story? Pitch your research
• World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

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Contacts:

Julia Victoria Seidel
European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Lagrange Laboratory, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur
Santiago, Chile and Nice, France
Tel: +33 743 32 79 73
Email: jseidel@oca.eu

Bibiana Prinoth
Lund University
Lund, Sweden
Tel: +46 72 442 03 69
Email: bibiana.prinoth@fysik.lu.se

Leonardo A. dos Santos
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, USA
Tel: +1 (410) 338-4395
Email: ldsantos@stsci.edu

Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Media Manager
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6670
Cell: +49 151 241 664 00
Email: press@eso.org

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Webb peeks into Perseus

A nebula made up of cloudy gas and dust in the form of soft and wispy clouds and, in the centre, thin and highly detailed layers pressed close together. Large, bright stars surrounded by six long points of light are dotted over the image, as well as some small, point-like stars embedded in the clouds. The clouds are lit up in blue close to the stars; orange colours show clouds that glow in infrared light. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Scholz, K. Muzic, A. Langeveld, R. Jayawardhana

This stunning new mosaic of images from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope showcases the nearby star-forming cluster, NGC 1333. The nebula is in the Perseus molecular cloud, and located approximately 960 light-years away.

Webb’s superb sensitivity allows astronomers to investigate young objects with extremely low masses. Some of the faintest ‘stars’ in the picture are in fact newly born free-floating brown dwarfs with masses comparable to those of giant planets.

The same cluster was featured as the 33rd anniversary image of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in April 2023. Hubble’s image just scratched the surface of this region, because clouds of dust obscure much of the star formation process. Observing with larger aperture and in the infrared part of the spectrum, Webb is capable of peering through the dusty veil to reveal newborn stars, brown dwarfs and planetary mass objects.

The centre of the image presents a deep peek into the heart of the NGC1333 cloud. Across the image we see large patches of orange, which represent gas glowing in the infrared. These so-called Herbig-Haro objects form when ionised material ejected from young stars collides with the surrounding cloud. They are hallmarks of a very active site of star formation.

Many of the young stars in this image are surrounded by disks of gas and dust, which may eventually produce planetary systems. Similar to the young stars in this mosaic, our own Sun and planets formed inside a dusty molecular cloud, 4.6 billion years ago. Our Sun did not form in isolation but as part of a cluster, which was perhaps even more massive than NGC 1333. The cluster in the mosaic, only 1-3 million years old, presents us with an opportunity to study stars like our Sun, as well as brown dwarfs and free-floating planets, in their nascent stages.

The images were captured as part of the Webb observation programme 1202 (PI: A. Scholz) to survey a large portion of NGC 1333. These data constitute the first deep spectroscopic survey of the young cluster, and have identified brown dwarfs down to planetary masses using the observatory’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS). The first results from this survey have been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

Source: ESA

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Licence
CC BY 4.0 INT or ESA Standard Licence
(content can be used under either licence)

Space Science

JWST | Webb

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Super-Earth Skimming Habitable Zone of Red Dwarf

Schematic diagram of the newly discovered Ross 508 planetary system. The green region represents the habitable zone where liquid water can exist on the planetary surface. The planetary orbit is shown as a blue line. Ross 508 b skims the inner edge of the habitable zone (solid line), possibly crossing into the habitable zone for part of the orbit (dashed line). (Credit: Astrobiology Center) Original size (100KB) 

A super-Earth planet has been found near the habitable zone of a red dwarf star only 37 light-years from the Earth. This is the first discovery by a new instrument on the Subaru Telescope and offers a chance to investigate the possibility of life on planets around nearby stars. With such a successful first result, we can expect that the Subaru Telescope will discover more, potentially even better, candidates for habitable planets around red dwarfs.

Red dwarfs, stars smaller than the Sun, account for three-quarters of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, and are abundant in the neighborhood around the Sun. As such, they are important targets in the search for nearby extra-solar planets and extraterrestrial life. But red dwarfs are cool and don’t emit much visible light compared to other types of stars, making it difficult to study them.

In the infrared wavelengths red dwarfs are brighter. So the Astrobiology Center in Japan developed an infrared observational instrument mounted on the Subaru Telescope to search for signs of planets around red dwarf stars. The instrument is called IRD for Infrared Doppler, the observational method used in this search.

The first fruits of this search are signs of a super-Earth four times the mass of the Earth circling the star Ross 508, located 37 light-years away in the constellation Serpens. This planet, Ross 508 b, has a year of only 11 Earth-days, and lies at the inner edge of the habitable zone around its host star. Interestingly, there are indications that the orbit is elliptical, which would mean that for part of the orbit the planet would be in the habitable zone, the region where conditions would be right for liquid water to exist on the surface of the planet. Whether or not there is actually water or life are questions of further study.

To have the very first planet discovered by this new method be so tantalizingly close to the habitable zone seems too good to be true and bodes well for future discoveries. Bun’ei Sato, a Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the principal investigator in this search comments, “It has been 14 years since the start of IRD’s development. We have continued our development and research with the hope of finding a planet exactly like Ross 508 b.”

These results appeared as Harakawa et al. “A Super-Earth Orbiting Near the Inner Edge of the Habitable Zone around the M4.5-dwarf Ross 508” in Publication of the Astronomical Society of Japan on June 30, 2022.

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Related Links

• Can a Super-Earth around a Low-Mass Star Harbor Life? (Subaru Telescope)
• Can a Super-Earth around a Low-Mass Star Harbor Life? (Astrobiology Center)
• New IR Instrument Searches for Habitable Planets (July 2, 2018)

Source: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ)/News

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New ESO observations show rocky exoplanet has just half the mass of Venus

PR Image eso2112a

Artist’s impression of the L 98-59 planetary system

 

PR Image eso2112b

Comparison of the L 98-59 exoplanet system with the inner Solar System

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Videos

PR Video eso2112a

A neighbouring planetary system reveals its secrets (ESOcast 242 Light)

 

PR Video eso2112b

Artist’s impression of L 98-59b 

 

PR Video eso2112c

Artist’s impression of L 98-59c 

 

PR Video eso2112d

Artist’s impression of L 98-59d 

 

PR Video eso2112e

A “fly-to” the L 98-59 planetary system

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A team of astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile to shed new light on planets around a nearby star, L 98-59, that resemble those in the inner Solar System. Amongst the findings are a planet with half the mass of Venus — the lightest exoplanet ever to be measured using the radial velocity technique — an ocean world, and a possible planet in the habitable zone.

"The planet in the habitable zone may have an atmosphere that could protect and support life,” says María Rosa Zapatero Osorio, an astronomer at the Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain, and one of the authors of the study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The results are an important step in the quest to find life on Earth-sized planets outside the Solar System. The detection of biosignatures on an exoplanet depends on the ability to study its atmosphere, but current telescopes are not large enough to achieve the resolution needed to do this for small, rocky planets. The newly studied planetary system, called L 98-59 after its star, is an attractive target for future observations of exoplanet atmospheres. Its orbits a star only 35 light-years away and has now been found to host rocky planets, like Earth or Venus, which are close enough to the star to be warm.

With the contribution of ESO’s VLT, the team was able to infer that three of the planets may contain water in their interiors or atmospheres. The two planets closest to the star in the L 98-59 system are probably dry, but might have small amounts of water, while up to 30% of the third planet’s mass could be water, making it an ocean world.

Furthermore, the team found “hidden” exoplanets that had not previously been spotted in this planetary system. They discovered a fourth planet and suspect there is a fifth, in a zone at the right distance from the star for liquid water to exist on its surface. “We have hints of the presence of a terrestrial planet in the habitable zone of this system,” explains Olivier Demangeon, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, University of Porto in Portugal and lead author of the new study.

The study represents a technical breakthrough, as astronomers were able to determine, using the radial velocity method, that the innermost planet in the system has just half the mass of Venus. This makes it the lightest exoplanet ever measured using this technique, which calculates the wobble of the star caused by the tiny gravitational tug of its orbiting planets.

The team used the Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) instrument on ESO’s VLT to study L 98-59. “Without the precision and stability provided by ESPRESSO this measurement would have not been possible,” says Zapatero Osorio. “This is a step forward in our ability to measure the masses of the smallest planets beyond the Solar System.”

The astronomers first spotted three of L 98-59’s planets in 2019, using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). This satellite relies on a technique called the transit method — where the dip in the light coming from the star caused by a planet passing in front of it is used to infer the properties of the planet — to find the planets and measure their sizes. However, it was only with the addition of radial velocity measurements made with ESPRESSO and its predecessor, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) at the ESO La Silla 3.6-metre telescope, that Demangeon and his team were able to find extra planets and measure the masses and radii of the first three. “If we want to know what a planet is made of, the minimum that we need is its mass and its radius,” Demangeon explains.

The team hopes to continue to study the system with the forthcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), while ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), under construction in the Chilean Atacama Desert and set to start observations in 2027, will also be ideal for studying these planets. “The HIRES instrument on the ELT may have the power to study the atmospheres of some of the planets in the L 98-59 system, thus complementing the JWST from the ground,” says Zapatero Osorio.

“This system announces what is to come,” adds Demangeon. “We, as a society, have been chasing terrestrial planets since the birth of astronomy and now we are finally getting closer and closer to the detection of a terrestrial planet in the habitable zone of its star, of which we could study the atmosphere.”

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More Information

This research was presented in a paper entitled “A warm terrestrial planet with half the mass of Venus transiting a nearby star” to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics (doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202140728).

The team is composed of Olivier D. S. Demangeon (Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto, Portugal [IA/UPorto], Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal [CAUP] and Departamento de Física e Astronomia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Portugal [FCUP]), M. R. Zapatero Osorio (Centro de Astrobiología, Madrid, Spain [CSIC-INTA]), Y. Alibert (Physics Institute, University of Bern, Switzerland [Bern]), S. C. C. Barros (IA/UPorto, CAUP and FCUP), V. Adibekyan (IA/UPorto, CAUP and FCUP), H. M. Tabernero (IA/UPorto and CAUP), A. Antoniadis-Karnavas (IA/UPorto & FCUP), J. D. Camacho (IA/UPorto & FCUP), A. Suárez Mascareño (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain [IAC] and Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain [ULL]), M. Oshagh (IAC/ULL), G. Micela (INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo, Palermo, Italy), S. G. Sousa (IA/UPortol & CAUP), C. Lovis (Observatoire de Genève, Université de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland [UNIGE]), F. A. Pepe (UNIGE), R. Rebolo (IAC/ULL & Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain), S. Cristiani (INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Italy [INAF Trieste]), N. C. Santos (IA/UPorto, CAUP and FCUP), R. Allart (Department of Physics and Institute for Research on Exoplanets, Université de Montréal, Canada and UNIGE), C. Allende Prieto (IAC/ULL), D. Bossini (IA/UPorto), F. Bouchy (UNIGE), A. Cabral (Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal [IA/FCUL] and Departamento de Física da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal), M. Damasso (INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, Italy [INAF Torino]), P. Di Marcantonio (INAF Trieste), V. D’Odorico (INAF Trieste & Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe, Trieste, Italy [IFPU]), D. Ehrenreich (UNIGE), J. Faria (IA/UPorto, CAUP and FCUP), P. Figueira (European Southern Observatory, Santiago de Chile, Chile [ESO-Chile] and IA/UPorto), R. Génova Santos (IAC/ULL), J. Haldemann (Bern), J. I. González Hernández (IAC/ULL), B. Lavie (UNIGE), J. Lillo-Box (CSIC-INTA), G. Lo Curto (European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany [ESO]), C. J. A. P. Martins (IA/UPorto and CAUP), D. Mégevand (UNIGE), A. Mehner (ESO-Chile), P. Molaro (INAF Trieste and IFPU), N. J. Nunes (IA/FCUL), E. Pallé (IAC/ULL), L. Pasquini (ESO), E. Poretti (Fundación G. Galilei – INAF Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, La Palma, Spain and INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Italy), A. Sozzetti (INAF Torino), and S. Udry (UNIGE).

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It has 16 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its world-leading Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. ESO is also a major partner in two facilities on Chajnantor, APEX and ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

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Links

• Research paper
• Photos of the VLT
• For journalists: subscribe to receive our releases under embargo in your language
• For scientists: got a story? Pitch your research

 

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Contacts

Olivier Demangeon
Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciências do Espaço, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto
Porto, Portugal
Tel: +351 226 089 855
Email: olivier.demangeon@astro.up.pt

María Rosa Zapatero Osorio
Chair of the “Atmospheric Characterisation” working group of the ESPRESSO science team at Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA)
Madrid, Spain
Tel: +34 9 15 20 64 27
Email: mosorio@cab.inta-csic.es

Nuno Santos
Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciências do Espaço, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto
Porto, Portugal
Email: nuno.santos@astro.up.pt

François Bouchy
Member of the “Transiting planets” working group of the ESPRESSO science team at Université de Genève
Genève, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 379 24 60
Email: Francois.Bouchy@unige.ch

Alejandro Suárez Mascareño
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
Tenerife, Spain
Tel: +34 658 778 954
Email: asm@iac.es

Mario Damasso
INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino
Turin, Italy
Tel: +39 339 1816786
Email: mario.damasso@inaf.it

Pedro Figueira
Astronomer at ESO and Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, instrument scientist of ESPRESSO
Santiago, Chile
Tel: +56 2 2463 3074
Email: pedro.figueira@eso.org

Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Media Manager
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6670
Cell: +49 151 241 664 00
Email: press@eso.org

Source: ESO/News

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NASA’s Webb to Explore a Neighboring, Dusty Planetary System

A debris disk, which includes comets, asteroids, rocks of various sizes, and plenty of dust, orbits the star Beta Pictoris, which is blocked at the center of this 2012 image by a coronagraph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. This is the visible-light view of the system. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will view Beta Pictoris in infrared light, both using its coronagraphs and capturing data known as spectra to allow researchers to learn significantly more about the gas and dust in the debris disk, which includes lots of smaller bodies like exocomets. Credits: IMAGE: NASA, ESA, Daniel Apai (University of Arizona), Glenn Schneider (University of Arizona). Release Images

Researchers will take stock of the dust in the debris disk surrounding the nearby star Beta Pictoris

Planetary systems are very busy places. In addition to the planets orbiting their host star, planetary systems are chock full of dust and other fragments left over from planet formation – a debris disk. Our own solar system includes the Kuiper Belt, which begins beyond Neptune. Younger systems, though, are a bit less “organized.” Take Beta Pictoris, a planetary system only 63 light-years away with a mature star, at least two planets, and the first comets discovered outside our solar system. Although researchers have observed it with powerful space- and ground-based telescopes since the 1980s, there’s still a lot we don’t yet know about its overall makeup. That’s why researchers will study the dusty disk of Beta Pictoris with Webb to better map out its dusty contents.

Researchers will use NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to study Beta Pictoris, an intriguing young planetary system that sports at least two planets, a jumble of smaller, rocky bodies, and a dusty disk. Their goals include gaining a better understanding of the structures and properties of the dust to better interpret what is happening in the system. Since it’s only about 63 light-years away and chock full of dust, it appears bright in infrared light – and that means there is a lot of information for Webb to gather.

Beta Pictoris is the target of several planned Webb observing programs, including one led by Chris Stark of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and two led by Christine Chen of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland. Stark’s program will directly image the system after blocking the light of the star to gather a slew of new details about its dust. Chen’s programs will gather spectra, which spread light out like a rainbow to reveal which elements are present. All three observing programs will add critical details to what’s known about this nearby system.

First, a Review of What We Know

Beta Pictoris has been regularly studied in radio, infrared, and visible light since the 1980s. The star itself is twice as massive as our sun and quite a bit hotter, but also significantly younger. (The Sun is 4.6 billion years old, but Beta Pictoris is approximately 20 million years old.) At this stage, the star is stable and hosts at least two planets, which are both far more massive than Jupiter. But this planetary system is remarkable because it is where the first exocomets (comets in other systems) were discovered. There are quite a lot of bodies zipping around this system!

Like our own solar system, Beta Pictoris has a debris disk, which includes comets, asteroids, rocks of various sizes, and plenty of dust in all shapes that orbit the star. (A debris disk is far younger and can be more massive than our solar system’s Kuiper Belt, which begins near Neptune’s orbit and is where many short-period comets originate.)

This outside ring of dust and debris is also where a lot of activity is happening. Pebbles and boulders could be colliding and breaking into far smaller pieces — sending out plenty of dust.

Scrutinizing This Planetary System

Stark’s team will use Webb’s coronagraphs, which block the light of the star, to observe the faint portions of the debris disk that surround the entire system. “We know there are two massive planets around Beta Pictoris, and farther out there is a belt of small bodies that are colliding and fragmenting,” Stark explained. “But what’s in between? How similar is this system to our solar system? Can dust and water ice from the outer belt eventually make its way into the inner region of the system? Those are details we can help tease out with Webb.”

Webb’s imagery will allow the researchers to study how the small dust grains interact with planets that are present in that system. Plus, Webb will detail all the fine dust that streams off these objects, permitting the researchers to infer the presence of larger rocky bodies and what their distribution is in the system. They’ll also carefully assess how the dust scatters light and reabsorbs and reemits light when it’s warm, allowing them to constrain what the dust is made of. By cataloging the specifics of Beta Pictoris, the researchers will also assess how similar this system is to our solar system, helping us understand if the contents of our solar system are unique.

Isabel Rebollido, a team member and postdoctoral researcher at STScI, is already building complex models of Beta Pictoris. The first model combines existing data about the system, including radio, near-infrared, far-infrared, and visible light from both space- and ground-based observatories. In time, she will add Webb’s imagery to run a fuller analysis.

The second model will feature only Webb’s data – and will be the first they explore. “Is the light Webb will observe symmetrical?” Rebollido asked. “Or are there ‘bumps’ of light here and there because there is an accumulation of dust? Webb is far more sensitive than any other space telescope and gives us a chance to look for this evidence, as well as water vapor where we know there’s gas.”

Dust as a Decoder Ring

Think of the debris disk of Beta Pictoris as a very busy, elliptical highway – except one where there aren’t many traffic rules. Collisions between comets and larger rocks can produce fine dust particles that subsequently scatter throughout the system.

“After planets, most of the mass in the Beta Pictoris system is thought to be in smaller planetesimals that we can’t directly observe,” Chen explained. “Fortunately, we can observe the dust left behind when planetesimals collide.”

This dust is where Chen’s team will focus its research. What do the smallest dust grains look like? Are they compact or fluffy? What are they made of?

“We’ll analyze Webb’s spectra to map the locations of dust and gas – and figure out what their detailed compositions are,” Chen explained. “Dust grains are ‘fingerprints’ of planetesimals we can’t see directly and can tell us about what these planetesimals are made of and how they formed.” For example, are the planetesimals ice-rich like comets in our solar system? Are there signs of high-speed collisions between rocky planetesimals? Clearly analyzing if grains in one region are more solid or fluffy than another will help the researchers understand what is happening to the dust, and map out the subtle differences in the dust in each region.

“I’m looking forward to analyzing Webb’s data since it will provide exquisite detail,” added Cicero X. Lu, a team member and a fourth-year Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Webb will allow us to identify more elements and pinpoint their precise structures.”

In particular, there’s a cloud of carbon monoxide at the edge of the disk that greatly interests these researchers. It’s asymmetric and has an irregular, blobby side. One theory is that collisions released dust and gas from larger, icy bodies to form this cloud. Webb’s spectra will help them build scenarios that explain its origin.

The Reach of Infrared

These research programs are only possible because Webb has been designed to provide crisp, high-resolution detail in infrared light. The observatory specializes in collecting infrared light – which travels through gas and dust – both with images and spectra. Webb also has another advantage – its position in space. Webb will not be hindered by Earth’s atmosphere, which filters out some types of light, including several infrared wavelength bands. This observatory will allow researchers to gather a more complete range of infrared light and data about Beta Pictoris for the first time.

These studies will be conducted as part of Webb Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) and General Observers (GO) programs. The GTO programs are led by scientists who helped develop the key hardware and software components or technical and inter-disciplinary knowledge for the observatory. GO programs are competitively selected using a dual-anonymous review system, the same system that is used to allocate time on the Hubble Space Telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

 

Credits:

Media Contact:

Claire Blome
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Contact Us:
Direct inquiries to the News Team.

Related Links and Documents:

Visualization of a Debris Disk: "How Planets Form"

Source: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope/News

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Are We Watching a Planet Disintegrate?

Artist's illustration of the possible disintegrating planet in the nearby planetary system DMPP-1.

Credit: Mark A. Garlick/Haswell/ Barnes/Staab/Open University

Artist’s illustration of another DMPP-discovered planetary system, DMPP-2.

Credit: Mark A. Garlick/Haswell/ Barnes/Staab/Open University

Among the wealth of exoplanets we’ve discovered beyond our solar system, some are temperate, some less so. New observations have now revealed what may be a particularly inhospitable environment: a planet literally disintegrating as it orbits its host.

Peering Through the Shroud

With initial observations in 2015, the Dispersed Matter Planet Project (DMPP) promised an innovative approach to hunting for exoplanets closely orbiting their hosts. Using high-cadence, high-precision radial velocity measurements, the project targets bright nearby stars that shows signatures of being shrouded in hot circumstellar gas. By looking for tiny radial-velocity wiggles in the star’s signal, the DMPP team hopes to detect small planets that are losing mass as they orbit close to their hot hosts.

In December 2019, DMPP announced its first discoveries: six planets orbiting around three different target stars. Now, in a new publication led by scientist Mark Jones (The Open University, UK), the team has revisited the first of these systems, DMPP-1, with follow-up photometry from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

Intriguingly, the radial-velocity-detected planets are not the only signals from this system.

Phase-folded TESS light curve for DMPP-1, identifying a weak transit signal with a period of P = 3.2854 days.

Credit: Jones et al. 2020

Missing the Expected, but Finding the Unexpected

DMPP-1 is a 2-billion-year-old star located just over 200 light-years away. The radial-velocity observations of this system revealed the gravitational tugs of four planets all orbiting with periods of less than 19 days. The radial-velocity data suggest that this system is probably near edge-on and contains three super-Earths and one Neptune-like planet.

Jones and collaborators began their photometric follow-up by searching TESS data for evidence of these four planets transiting across the host star’s face. Interestingly, they found no sign of transits at the predicted periods — indicating that the four radial-velocity planets are either smaller than expected, or that the system isn’t quite edge-on after all, so the planets don’t pass directly in front of the star.

The authors did, however, find a new signal: a weak transit detection with a period of just ~3.3 days. This signal doesn’t match any of the known radial-velocity planets.

The depths of the seven detected transits are highly variable, with one even consistent with a depth of zero! This variability is common for disintegrating planets, as the cloud of ablated material is the primary cause of the transits. Click to enlarge. Credit: Jones et al. 2020

A Disappearing Planet?

What might this marginal detection be? Its variable transit depths, short period, and apparent small size are all consistent with a catastrophically disintegrating exoplanet — a close-in, small, rocky planet that is so irradiated by its host that its rocky surface is being sublimated. As time goes on, such a planet will eventually disintegrate into nothing.

This transit signal still needs to be confirmed with additional follow-up photometric observations. Assuming it proves to be a true detection, however, such a disintegrating, rocky planet orbiting a bright nearby star would provide a veritable gold mine of information.

By exploring the transit signals from DMPP-1 with future technology like the James Webb Space Telescope, we will be able to examine the composition of the ablated material, potentially revealing clues as to how hot, rocky inner planets form and evolve.

Citation

“A Possible Transit of a Disintegrating Exoplanet in the Nearby Multiplanet System DMPP-1,” Mark H. Jones et al 2020 ApJL 895 L17. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ab8f2b

Source: American Astronomical Society (AAS)

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