Circumplanetary Disk Discovered Poster – National Radio Astronomy Observatory

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Circumplanetary Disk Discovered Poster

Circumplanetary Disk Discovered Poster

Never-before-seen feature discovered in PDS 70

Never-before-seen feature discovered in PDS 70

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); A. Isella, NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello (artist impression), J.Hellerman

Protoplanetary Disks

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a bright blue young star with a cloud of cold gas surrounding it

Hydrogen Cyanide in HD 163296

False color image of protoplanetary disks side by side. Left is a ring disk showing blue scattered outer ring, green inner rings with gaps, and a yellow core. Center is a transition disk with a thin outer blue ring and thin green and yellow rings, and a large empty cavity in the center. Right is a compact small disk with thin blue and green rings, and a large inner yellow core with no gaps.

Protoplanetary Disks Side-by-Side Comparison

Elias 2-27 is a young star located just 378 light-years from Earth. The star is host to a massive protoplanetary disk of gas and dust, one of the key elements to planet formation. In this graphic illustration, dust is distributed along a spiral-shaped morphology first discovered in Elias 2-27 in 2016. The larger dust grains are found along the spiral arms while the smaller dust grains are distributed all around the protoplanetary disk. Asymmetric inflows of gas were also detected during the study, indicating that there may still be material infalling into the disk. Scientists believe that Elias 2-27 may eventually evolve into a planetary system, with gravitational instabilities causing the formation of giant planets. Because this process takes millions of years to occur, scientists can only observe the beginning stages.

Why Are Gravitational Instabilities Important?

Using gas velocity data, scientists observing Elias 2-27 were able to directly measure the mass of the young star’s protoplanetary disk and also trace dynamical perturbations in the star system. Visible in this animation are the dust continuum 0.87mm emission data (blue), along with emissions from gases C18O (yellow) and 13CO (red).

Young Star Elias 2-27 Gas Velocity Emissions

Vimeo Thumbnail for NRAO’s Baseline Episode 1: Trio of Infant Planets Discovered around Newborn Star

NRAO’s Baseline Episode 1: Trio of Infant Planets Discovered around Newborn Star

ALMA images of the planet-forming disk with misaligned rings around triple star system GW Orionis. The image on the right is made with ALMA data taken in 2017 from Bi et al. The image on the left is made with ALMA data taken in 2018 from Kraus et al.

ALMA images of triple star system GW Orionis

ALMA image of the planet-forming disk around the young star RU Lup, showing a giant set of spiral arms made out of gas. The structure extends to nearly 1000 astronomical units from the star.

RU Lup Spiral