Unveiled: First-Ever Video of a Newborn Planet Shaping Its Own Dust Disk

A swirling mix of gas and dust surrounds a young star, HD 135344B, located 440 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. Recent images from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) hint at something exciting: a compact object at the center of a prominent spiral in that dust. This bright signal suggests a planet that is still forming.

Astronomers have long searched for evidence of such worlds. Detecting a planet is tricky—it’s faint and often drowned out by the brightness of its star. The recent VLT observations provide the clearest view yet, allowing scientists to witness this process unfold in real time.

Francesco Maio from the University of Florence, who led the study, noted, “We may be watching a planet come into existence as it gathers mass.” The suspected planet orbits HD 135344B at a distance similar to Neptune’s orbit around the Sun. Model analyses suggest it could have twice the mass of Jupiter and is shaping the gas around it into stunning spiral arms.

These spirals were first spotted in 2018 with the earlier SPHERE instrument. Researchers theorized that a hidden planet might be influencing the dust, and the latest VLT images seem to confirm that idea—scientists have actually detected the light from the protoplanet itself.

Comparatively, another star, V960 Mon, has intrigued astronomers since it flared unexpectedly in 2014. It’s another example where spirals form due to gravitational instability, potentially leading to planet formation. This finding raises an important question: how do planets form in different environments?

In typical scenarios, planets grow slowly from dust grains over millions of years. However, in conditions of gravitational instability, a gas giant can form much more quickly, in just thousands of years. The candidate planet around HD 135344B shows how a stable disc allows a single, heavier planet to create noticeable structure while it gathers material.

With more powerful instruments like the soon-to-be-launched Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which will have a mirror four times larger than current telescopes, scientists hope to see even smaller planets and gain deeper insights into their formation processes.

Understanding how these bright knots of light around young stars come to be will require further observation. Will they prove to be stable planets, or just temporary clumps of dust? Each new discovery refines our understanding of how worlds emerge in the universe.

For a more in-depth look, check out the full study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Learn more about the European Southern Observatory and their groundbreaking work.

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