On May 22, 2020, A team of Scientists from the Observatoie de Paris, PSL (Paris Sciences et Lettres) University in France, have witnessed a birth of a new planet for the first time in human history by using photographs of the SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research) instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile.
- The new observations have been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics journal & lead author of the study was Anthony Boccaletti, an astronomer at the PSL University.
Evidence of the existence of a planet:
- From the pictures, astronomers have discovered the first direct evidence of a new planet born around a distant star called ‘AB Aurigae’, about 520 light years from Earth in the constellation Auriga or the Charioteer.
- A dense disc of dust and orange mass of gas has been seen around the star, where some clear spiral-shaped signs are visible near this disc, in which the curves are visible which occur at the time of creation of the new planet.
This star was observed earlier too:
The same system was observed a few years ago by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Then that observation indicated the beginning of the process of formation of planets. In those pictures also, scientists saw two spiral arms of gas in the disc near the star.
Clear pictures found in the last two years:
After this, in the year 2019 and 2020, the team of Boccaletti took pictures of this star with SPHERE device, which are the most clear pictures of this system so far.