Stellar Nursery: ALMA Captures Planets Forming 400 Light-Years Away
📡 The cosmos has once again unveiled one of its most breathtaking secrets. Using the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, astronomers have captured a remarkable image of a solar system in its earliest stages of formation.
The spotlight falls on the PDS 70 system, located nearly 400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. At its center lies a young star, blazing within a swirling halo of gas and dust. This dusty structure, called a circumstellar disc, is the raw material from which new worlds are born.
Planets in the Making
What makes PDS 70 extraordinary is the presence of not one, but two giant planets actively shaping their surroundings. Among them, PDS 70c stands out. Seen as a small dot to the right of the central star, this planet is surrounded by its own miniature disc of gas and dust, known as a circumplanetary disc.
This secondary disc is more than just cosmic decoration—it plays a vital role in the planet’s growth. As material spirals inward, it feeds the planet, helping it gain mass. At the same time, it could become the birthplace of moons, much like Jupiter’s moons that formed from its own disc billions of years ago.
Carving Out Space
As these planets form, they don’t remain passive. Their immense gravity sculpts the main disc, carving out gaps and pulling in material as they orbit. This process reshapes the system over time, providing astronomers with a rare, living snapshot of how planetary systems—including our own—come into existence.
A Glimpse Into Our Origins
For scientists, the PDS 70 system is more than just a distant curiosity—it’s a cosmic time machine. By observing it, we are peering back into the kind of environment where the solar system itself may have taken shape over 4.5 billion years ago.
The ALMA images don’t just satisfy curiosity; they push forward our understanding of planet formation, moon birth, and the evolution of stellar systems. Each glimpse into PDS 70 brings us one step closer to unraveling the story of our own cosmic origins.