Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) captured an image showing how massive planets could form. The Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s VLT spotted some interesting material around the star V960 Mon, a young star located over 5000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros.
This material attracted astronomers’ attention because it suddenly increased its brightness more than twenty times in 2014. SPHERE observations collected shortly after the onset of this brightness ‘outburst’ revealed that the material orbiting V960 Mon is assembling together in a series of intricate spiral arms extending over distances bigger than the entire Solar System. Using this data, astronomers believe that massive planets form either by ‘core accretion’, when dust grains come together, or by ‘gravitational instability’, the phenomenon where large fragments of the material around a star contract and collapse.
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On the left hand side in yellow is an image of the young star V960 Mon and its surrounding dusty material, taken with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Light that is reflected off of the dusty material orbiting the star becomes polarized — meaning it oscillates in a well-defined direction rather than randomly — and is then detected by SPHERE, revealing mesmerizing spiral arms,” said the ESO.
