The newly formed planet, named AB Aurigae b, is a gas giant in a remarkably early stage of formation, orbiting a star called AB Aurigae. AB Aurigae b orbits the star at an unusually long distance – 8.6 billion miles, which is more than twice as far from Pluto as our Sun (3.7 billion miles).
Just like Jupiter and Saturn, the planet is a gas giant – made up mostly of hydrogen and helium, with swirling gases surrounding a smaller solid nucleus. It is formed through what NASA experts call an “unconventional” and “intense and violent process”, different from the generally accepted theory of planet formation. Researchers have been using Hubble data since 2007, as well as the Subaru telescope near the top of an inactive Hawaiian volcano, to detect and study the planet. The researchers were able to directly image the newly formed exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a period of 13 years, using the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectroscope (STIS) and the Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). Above right, the 2007 Hubble NICMOS image shows AB Aurigae b in a southerly position relative to its host star, which is covered by the instrument coronograph (the star is indicated by a white star-shaped mark). The image taken in 2021 by STIS shows that the planet has moved counterclockwise over time The Hubble (pictured) orbits the Earth at a speed of about 17,000 miles / hour (27,300 km / h) on a low orbit around the Earth at about 340 miles at an altitude slightly higher than the International Space Station (ISS).

THE NEW PLANET

Name: AB Auriga b Galaxy: Galaxy Constellation: Auriga Mass: 9 MJ (9 times the mass of Jupiter) Diameter: Unknown
Distance from its sun: 8.6 billion miles Distance from Earth: 508 light years Gas or rocky? Gaseous The work is described in detail in a new study, written by NASA experts and published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. “We believe it is still very early in the birth process,” said lead author Thayne Currie of the Subaru Telescope and NASA-Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. “Evidence shows that this is the earliest stage of formation ever observed for a gas giant.” Although experts do not have a solid estimate of the diameter of AB Aurigae b, it is believed to be at least as large as Jupiter. The planet – the only one known in its system – is embedded in an extensive planet-forming disk surrounding its star, located 508 light-years from Earth. (A light year is the distance light travels in a year – 5.9 trillion miles or 9.5 trillion kilometers). Its star, AB Aurigae, is estimated to be about 2 million years old – an infant by astronomical standards. By comparison, our sun is about 4.5 billion years old.
AB Aurigae gained a glimpse of fame when her image appeared in a scene in the 2021 film “Don’t Look Up” when the new study was under consideration. The star is about 2.4 times more massive than our sun and almost 60 times brighter. This is the craziest coincidence with our AB Aur Nature paper. AB Aur makes a cameo appearance on “Don’t Look Up” @dontlookupfilm while Jennifer Lawrence was watching Subaru. The movie came out while the newspaper was under review! You can almost see the position of AB Aur b pic.twitter.com/iaQZJoTsxt – Thayne Currie (@AstroThayne) April 4, 2022
Of the more than 5,000 planets beyond our solar system – known as exoplanets – to be located, AB Aurigae b is one of the largest. It is approaching the maximum size to be classified as a planet and not as a brown dwarf, an astronomical object somewhere between the planet and the star. Almost all known exoplanets have orbits around their stars within the distance that separates our sun and the most distant planet of Poseidon. But AB Aurigae b orbits three times farther from Poseidon than the sun and 93 times the distance of the Earth from the sun. The newly discovered planet is surrounded by a star called AB Aurigae, located 508 light-years from Earth. This image shows the dust ring (red) and the gas coils (blue) of the AB Aurigae peristric disk (an accumulation of ring-shaped matter orbiting a star) The discovery was made thanks to Hubble, which was launched in 1990 and is still orbiting the Earth at a speed of about 17,000 miles / hour (27,300 km / h) on low Earth orbit. The researchers used data from two Hubble instruments – the Space Telescope Imaging Spectroscope (STIS) and the Near Infrared and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). The data was compared to that by a state-of-the-art planet-imaging instrument called the SCExAO on Japan’s 27-foot-long Subaru telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

WHAT IS NUCLEAR PROTECTION?

The most widely accepted theory for the formation of gas giants is the so-called nucleus accretion model. In this model, a planet-sized ice and rock core is formed first. Then an influx of interstellar gas and dust clings to the developing planet. The researchers believe that the birth of the new planet seems to follow a different process from the typical model of planetary formation, known as core accretion. All planets are made of material from a spinning disk – an accumulation of ring-shaped matter, such as gas, dust, and asteroids orbiting a star. The dominant theory for the formation of gas giant planets, the “nucleus augmentation”, describes where the planets embedded in the disk grow from small objects – ranging in size from dust grains to boulders – colliding and sticking together as they orbit a wheel. If this nucleus reaches the mass of the Earth many times, then it begins to accumulate gas from the disk. However, this process cannot form giant planets at great orbital distances, “so this discovery calls into question our understanding of planet formation,” said study author Olivier Guyon of the University of Arizona. AB Aurigae b was created through what is known as the “disk instability” mechanism, the team says. This is where, as a huge disk around a star cools, gravity causes the disk to split rapidly into one or more planetary mass fragments.
The data was compared to that by a state-of-the-art planet-imaging instrument called the SCExAO at Japan’s 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii (pictured) “There is more than one way to cook an egg,” Currie said. “And obviously there can be more than one way to form a planet like Jupiter.” Understanding the early days of the formation of Jupiter-like planets provides astronomers with more insight into the history of our solar system.
In the beginning of its life, our sun was also surrounded by a disk that created the Earth and the other planets. “New astronomical observations are constantly challenging our current theories, ultimately improving our understanding of the universe,” Guyon said. “The formation of the planet is very complicated and messy, with many surprises still ahead of us.”

NASA CONFIRMS THAT THERE ARE MORE THAN 5,000 PLANETS BEYOND OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

NASA has confirmed that there are more than 5,000 known planets outside our solar system known as extraterrestrials. The US space agency has added another 65 exoplanets to NASA’s online Exoplanet Archive, bringing the total to 5,009 as of April 1, 2022. That number was 5,005 on March 22, indicating that four planets had been added to the total in just 10 days. Exoplanets found so far include small, rocky worlds such as Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and “hot Jupiter” in very close orbits around their stars. The more than 5,000 exoplanets that have been confirmed in our galaxy so far include a variety of types – among them a mysterious variety known as “super-Earth” because they are larger than our world and possibly rocky. However, NASA emphasizes that only “a tiny fraction” of all the planets in the galaxy has been found.
The majority of exoplanets are gaseous, such as Jupiter or Neptune, and not terrestrial, according to NASA.
Most exoplanets are found by measuring the opacity of a star that happens to have a planet in front of it, called the transit method. Another way to detect exoplanets, called the Doppler method, measures the “oscillation” of stars due to the gravitational pull of orbiting planets.