Young planets carve rings and spirals in the gas around their suns

Growing planets carve rings and spiral arms out of the gas and dust surrounding their young stars, researchers report in three papers to be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. And dark streaks radiating away from the star in one of the planet nurseries appear to be shadows cast onto the disk by the clumps of planet-building material close to the star. This isn’t the first time that astronomers have spied rings around young stars, but the new images provide a peek at what goes into building diverse planetary systems.

The three stars — HD 97048, HD 135344B and RX J1615.3-3255 — are all youthful locals in our galaxy. They sit between 460 and 600 light-years away; the oldest is roughly a mere 8 million years old. All the stars have been studied before. But now three teams of researchers have used a new instrument at the Very Large Telescope in Chile to see extra-sharp details in the planet construction zone around each star.

The new instrument, named SPHERE, was designed to record images, spectra and polarimetry (the orientations of light waves) of young exoplanet families. Flexible mirrors within the instrument adapt to atmospheric turbulence above the telescope, and a tiny disk blocks light from the star, allowing faint details around the star to come into view.