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Rare Stellar Alignment Offers Opportunity to Hunt for Planets
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By Space Force
In partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory, the United States Space Force is currently accepting proposals for USSF University Consortium/Space Strategic Technology Institute 4, focused on Advanced Remote Sensing.
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By NASA
Artist’s concept of a young, newly discovered planet, exposed to observation by a warped debris disk. Credit: Robert Hurt, Caltech-IPAC. The discovery
A huge planet with a long name – IRAS 04125+2902 b – is really just a baby: only 3 million years old. And because such infant worlds are usually hidden inside obscuring disks of debris, it is the youngest planet so far discovered using the dominant method of planet detection.
Key facts
The massive planet, likely still glowing from the heat of its formation, lies in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, an active stellar nursery with hundreds of newborn stars some 430 light-years away. 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. But such planetary systems must be edge-on, from Earth’s vantage point, for the transit method to work. Very young star systems are surrounded by disks of debris, however, blocking our view of any potentially transiting planets.
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.
Details
While the warped outer disk is a great coincidence, it’s also a great mystery. Possible explanations include a migration of the planet itself, moving closer to the star and, in the process, diverging from the orientation of the outer disk – so that, from Earth, the planet’s orbit is edge-on, crossing the face of the star, but the outer disk remains nearly face-on to us. One problem with this idea: Moving a planet so far out of alignment with its parent disk would likely require another (very large) object in this system. None has been detected so far.
The system’s sun happens to have a distant stellar companion, also a possible culprit in the warping of the outer disk. The angle of the orbit of the companion star, however, matches that of the planet and its parent star. Stars and planets tend to take the gravitational path of least resistance, so such an arrangement should push the disk into a closer alignment with the rest of the system – not into a radical departure.
Another way to get a “broken” outer disk, the study authors say, would not involve a companion star at all. Stellar nurseries like the Taurus Molecular Cloud can be densely packed, busy places. Computer simulations show that rains of infalling material from the surrounding star-forming region could be the cause of disk-warping. Neither simulations nor observations have so far settled the question of whether warped or broken disks are common or rare in such regions.
Fun facts
Combining TESS’s transit measurements with another way of observing planets yields more information about the planet itself. We might call this second approach the “wobble” method. The gravity of a planet tugs its star one way, then another, as the orbiting planet makes its way around the star. And that wobble can be detected by changes in the light from the star, picked up by specialized instruments on Earth. Such “radial velocity” measurements of this planet reveal that its mass, or heft, amounts to no more than about a third of our own Jupiter. But the transit data shows the planet’s diameter is about the same. That means the planet has a comparatively low density and, likely, an inflated atmosphere. So this world probably is not a gas giant like Jupiter. Instead, it could well be a planet whose atmosphere will shrink over time. When it finally settles down, it could become a gaseous “mini-Neptune” or even a rocky “super-Earth.” These are the two most common planet types in our galaxy – despite the fact that neither type can be found in our solar system.
The discoverers
A science team led by astronomer Madyson G. Barber of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill published the study, “A giant planet transiting a 3 Myr protostar with a misaligned disk,” in the journal Nature in November 2024.
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By NASA
Creating a golden streak in the night sky, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars upward after liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 14, 2023, on the company’s 27th Commercial Resupply Services mission for the agency to the International Space Station. SpaceX NASA invites the public to participate in virtual activities ahead of the launch of SpaceX’s 31st commercial resupply services mission for the agency. NASA and SpaceX are targeting 9:29 p.m. EST Monday, Nov. 4, for the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to launch on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
In addition to food, supplies, and equipment for the crew, Dragon will deliver several new experiments, including the COronal Diagnostic EXperiment to examine solar wind and how it forms, as well as Antarctic moss to observe the combined effects of cosmic radiation and microgravity on plants. Other investigations aboard include a device to test cold welding of metals in microgravity and an investigation that studies how space impacts different materials
Members of the public can register to attend the launch virtually. As a virtual guest, you’ll gain access to curated resources, interactive opportunities, and mission-specific information delivered straight to your inbox. Following liftoff, virtual guests will receive a commemorative stamp for their virtual guest passport
Learn more about NASA research and activities on the International Space Station at:
https://www.nasa.gov/station
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By NASA
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Drake et al, IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Spitzer; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk Most stars form in collections, called clusters or associations, that include very massive stars. These giant stars send out large amounts of high-energy radiation, which can disrupt relatively fragile disks of dust and gas that are in the process of coalescing to form new planets.
A team of astronomers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, in combination with ultraviolet, optical, and infrared data, to show where some of the most treacherous places in a star cluster may be, where planets’ chances to form are diminished.
The target of the observations was Cygnus OB2, which is the nearest large cluster of stars to our Sun — at a distance of about 4,600 light-years. The cluster contains hundreds of massive stars as well as thousands of lower-mass stars. The team used long Chandra observations pointing at different regions of Cygnus OB2, and the resulting set of images were then stitched together into one large image.
The deep Chandra observations mapped out the diffuse X-ray glow in between the stars, and they also provided an inventory of the young stars in the cluster. This inventory was combined with others using optical and infrared data to create the best census of young stars in the cluster.
In this new composite image, the Chandra data (purple) shows the diffuse X-ray emission and young stars in Cygnus OB2, and infrared data from NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope (red, green, blue, and cyan) reveals young stars and the cooler dust and gas throughout the region.
In these crowded stellar environments, copious amounts of high-energy radiation produced by stars and planets are present. Together, X-rays and intense ultraviolet light can have a devastating impact on planetary disks and systems in the process of forming.
Planet-forming disks around stars naturally fade away over time. Some of the disk falls onto the star and some is heated up by X-ray and ultraviolet radiation from the star and evaporates in a wind. The latter process, known as “photoevaporation,” usually takes between 5 and 10 million years with average-sized stars before the disk disappears. If massive stars, which produce the most X-ray and ultraviolet radiation, are nearby, this process can be accelerated.
The researchers using this data found clear evidence that planet-forming disks around stars indeed disappear much faster when they are close to massive stars producing a lot of high-energy radiation. The disks also disappear more quickly in regions where the stars are more closely packed together.
For regions of Cygnus OB2 with less high-energy radiation and lower numbers of stars, the fraction of young stars with disks is about 40%. For regions with more high-energy radiation and higher numbers of stars, the fraction is about 18%. The strongest effect — meaning the worst place to be for a would-be planetary system — is within about 1.6 light-years of the most massive stars in the cluster.
A separate study by the same team examined the properties of the diffuse X-ray emission in the cluster. They found that the higher-energy diffuse emission comes from areas where winds of gas blowing away from massive stars have collided with each other. This causes the gas to become hotter and produce X-rays. The less energetic emission probably comes from gas in the cluster colliding with gas surrounding the cluster.
Two separate papers describing the Chandra data of Cygnus OB2 are available. The paper about the planetary danger zones, led by Mario Giuseppe Guarcello (National Institute for Astrophysics in Palermo, Italy), appeared in the November 2023 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, and is available here. The paper about the diffuse emission, led by Juan Facundo Albacete-Colombo (University of Rio Negro in Argentina) was published in the same issue of Astrophysical Journal Supplement, and is available here.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
JPL managed the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington until the mission was retired in January 2020. Science operations were conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Spacecraft operations were based at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive operated by IPAC at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description
This release features a composite image of the Cygnus OB2 star cluster, which resembles a night sky blanketed in orange, purple, and grey clouds.
The center of the square image is dominated by purple haze. This haze represents diffuse X-ray emissions, and young stars, detected by the Chandra X-ray observatory. Surrounding the purple haze is a mottled, streaky, brick orange cloud. Another cloud resembling a tendril of grey smoke stretches from our lower left to the center of the image. These clouds represent relatively cool dust and gas observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Although the interwoven clouds cover most of the image, the thousands of stars within the cluster shine through. The lower-mass stars present as tiny specks of light. The massive stars gleam, some with long refraction spikes.
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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By NASA
NASA/Don Pettit NASA astronaut Don Pettit fills a sphere of water with food coloring in this image from Oct. 20, 2024. Pettit calls experiments like these “science of opportunity” – moments of scientific exploration that spontaneously come to mind because of the unique experience of being on the International Space Station. During his previous missions, Pettit has contributed to advancements for human space exploration aboard the International Space Station resulting in several published scientific papers and breakthroughs.
See other inventive experiments Pettit has conducted.
Image credit: NASA/Don Pettit
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