Baby Exoplanet Discovered Using Clumps of Dust

Using a new method of analysis on images from ALMA Observatory, scientists have discovered a Neptune or Saturn size exoplanet forming in a distant protoplanetary disk.

IMAGE: Artist’s illustration of a small Saturn-like planet discovered in the system LkCa 15. The planet resides within dense rings of dust and gas that surround a bright yellow star. Material accumulates in a clump and arc-shape, about 60 degrees away from the planet. Note: This illustration is not to scale. CREDIT: M.Weiss/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

Understanding the evolution of planets is one of the most important aspects of understanding planetary formation. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again — no one set of rules or processes seems to apply to the formation of planetary systems. Our sample size of one has been proven to be an outlier of a system so far. And with bigger and better telescopes, we are getting to the point where directly imaging exoplanets is becoming more and more common, aiding us in our quest to find patterns.

Even better, we’re beginning to find incredibly young planets, and a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters with lead author Feng Long has provided a potential new method to find those worlds. In this case, an exoplanet in the range of Neptune or Saturn size was discovered in the disk of planetary dust. The disk is LkCa 15, about 518 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus. Feng analyzed new high-resolution data from the ALMA Observatory to detect features that point to the presence of a planet.