A research team led by the University of Michigan pointed James Webb Telescope at a disk around a protostar called SAO 206462.
The James Webb Telescope has found new evidence that planets formed in gas and dust disks are developing quickly. These disks are disks of gas and dust orbiting a protostar at their center. Furthermore, researchers have photographed several dozen disks, but they have only captured two planets during their formation.
Besides, using the James Webb Space Telescope’s sophisticated sensors, astronomers investigate protoplanetary disks to understand planet formation and birthplace evolution.
Michigan researchers focused James Webb Telescope onto a disk around SAO 206462, a protostar. The researchers may have found a planet candidate forming in this disk, but not the planet they were expecting.
“Several simulations show that the planet should be inside the disk, large, hot and bright,” said U-M astronomer Gabriele Cugno. “But we didn’t find it, which means that either the planet is much colder than we thought, or it’s covered by some material that prevents us from seeing it,” said Gabriele Cugno, U-M astronomer. “What we found is a different planetary candidate, but we can’t say with 100 percent certainty whether it’s a planet or a faint background star or galaxy that contaminates our image. Future observations will help us understand exactly what we’re looking at.”
Astronomers have previously observed the disk with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Subaru Telescope, the Very Large Telescope and ALMA. These observations show a disk containing two powerful spirals initiated by a planet. The U-M team anticipated a gas giant planet composed of hydrogen and helium, similar to Jupiter in our own solar system.
Source: https://www.cioupdate.com.tr/bilim-2/james-webb-teleskobu-2/
