WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Astronomers have discovered a massive newborn planet in its early stages.
Located about 430 light-years away in a region called the Taurus Molecular Cloud, 3 million years old IRAS 04125+2902 b is the youngest planet so far discovered using the dominant method of planet detection.
The massive planet, likely still glowing from the heat of its formation, lies in an active stellar nursery with hundreds of newborn stars.
The cloud's relative closeness makes it a prime target for astronomers. But while the cloud offers deep insight into the formation and evolution of young stars, their planets are usually a closed book to telescopes like TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.
These telescopes rely on the 'transit method,' watching for the slight dip in starlight when a planet crosses the face of its host star. Very young star systems are surrounded by obscuring disks of debris, blocking astronomers' view and delaying its discovery.
'A research team has just reported an extraordinary stroke of luck. Somehow, the outer debris disk surrounding this newborn planet, IRAS 04125+2902 b, has been sharply warped, exposing the baby world to extensive transit observations by TESS,' NASA said.
Less than one third the mass of Jupiter, it is a low-density world with an inflated atmosphere.
This discovery, by a team of scientific researchers led by Madyson G. Barber from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, marks a milestone in understanding how planets form and evolve.
The details of the discovery have been published in the study, 'A giant planet transiting a 3 Myr protostar with a misaligned disk,' in the journal Nature.
Copyright(c) 2024 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
© 2024 AFX News
