WASHINGTON: Scientists have found 1,900 planets outside of our solar system.Until now, that is.“The researchers’ discovery provides stringent constraints on planet-formation theories”, Zhaohuan Zhu of Princeton University, who was not affiliated with the new study, wrote in an accompanying “News & Views” piece in the same issue of Nature. But the process to becoming a planet, or a natural satellite, isn’t as easy as it sounds. These disks contain debris left over from the formation of the star, and astronomers think planets form by “sweeping up dust and debris as the material falls onto the planets instead of staying in the disk or falling onto the star”. A gas-giant planet is being born around a young star 450 light-years from Earth, astronomers say. One astronomical unit equals to the distance of Earth from the sun or, 93 million miles. Their light wavers in brightness, which makes it hard to notice the shadow of a passing exoplanet. But the relatively new Large Binocular Telescope was purpose-built for spotting such objects, which allows scientists to see them much more sharply. It’s within these disks that planets form; a few of the materials coalesce into larger objects, and then create gaps in the dust cloud where the new planets reside. The greyscale is a previously published image of the disk. What is known is that particles left over from the dusty disc that surrounds a newborn star coalesce and coalesce until eons later, a nascent planet takes shape.
The team looked at the signatures these planets give off in two infrared wavelengths and one particular visible wavelength called H-alpha, which is emitted by glowing hydrogen gas.
