Astronomers have confirmed a world that’s less than a million years old as the youngest known planet, using data from NASA-funded archives.
The planet orbiting the star Elias 2-24 is about as large as Jupiter and the star is about 450 light-years from Earth.
Finding and studying more baby planets like Elias 2-24 b will help astronomers refine those models.
Yet the glowing dot they spotted was 55 times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun and already behaving like a forming planet.
Elias 2-24 b is about 10 times farther out from its host star.
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Current models predict that it takes about 5 million years to form a Jupiter-size planet at Jupiter’s distance from the Sun, and even longer farther out.
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Astronomers have confirmed a world that’s less than a million years old as the youngest known planet, using data from NASA-funded archives. Called Elias 2-24 b, the baby planet is still whirling in its natal disk of dust and gas.
In a study published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team led by Andrea Bernardi, a doctoral candidate at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile, homed in on archival observations of seven stars that were observed using the coronagraph at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, which partners with NASA under a cooperative agreement.
The planet orbiting the star Elias 2-24 is about as large as Jupiter and the star is about 450 light-years from Earth.
Stars are born in swirling clouds of gas and dust, swaddled in haze. Orbiting planets form from leftover material that clumps up and gradually sculpts a path around the star.
Finding and studying more baby planets like Elias 2-24 b will help astronomers refine those models.
Current models predict that it takes about 5 million years to form a Jupiter-size planet at Jupiter’s distance from the Sun, and even longer farther out. Yet the glowing dot they spotted was 55 times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun and already behaving like a forming planet. Roman, which just launched Aug. 30, is equipped with an even more powerful coronagraph and is capable of spotting planets that are much harder for other telescopes to see.
Elias 2-24 b is about 10 times farther out from its host star.
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