Planetary germs on collision course
New images of the Sterns Beta Pictoris show that clearly planetimals in the Protoploric gas cloud are gathered together and greater chunks would be back into the material soup, from which planets could develop.
In the current ie of the Science Journal Nature report Charles M. Telesco from the University of Florida as well as colleagues from the USA, Gobritain and Chile on their analyzes of recordings in the middle infrared area of the Circumstalleren slice around Beta Pictoris, which indicate that breeding stucco has accumulated in a region, probably with a collision Greater asteroids or a baby planet have arisen.
Artistic idea of the inside of the slice around Beta Pictoris
Beta Pictoris is a blue star, which is to be about 15 million years old and around 60 light years from us in the constellation Pictor (Painterstageele). He has about the double mass of our sun. The dense slice of gas and dust surrounding the star, which is gross as our solar system, was discovered twenty years ago. Such cosmic slices are the typical birthplaces of planets (cosmic slices: busts of the planets). However, the telescopes were not able to absorb a very pracise image from the cloud of dust, from which backlens had to be drawn to their exact nature and composition.
The astronomers have already laughed for a long time that in the dark dust disk, an elliptical system with several rings hides and that its distorted, asymmetric shape is probably due to an approximately 100.000 years passed by star. In fact, Japanese scientists have been able to confirm the images of infrared observatories last year, that a total of three straps made of dust, rich and rocks at a distance of 6, 16 and 30 astronomical units (an astronomical unit corresponds to the distance between the sun and earth) around beta Pictoris circles. Many of the rock boulders come after these astromineralogical analyzes of together coarse chunks such as planetesimals and comets ("Rising from the Ruins…"To).
Death of a baby planet
At Beta Pictoris, pretty sure at least one planet circles, a giant that corresponds in its coarse about Jupiter, at least there are very clear indications of such an object (Disk Around Star May Be Warped by Unseen Planet).
What Charles Telesco and his colleagues now have spurt, but has nothing to do with this coarse object. They discovered with the new Thermal Region Camera and Spectograph (T-RECs) of the Gemini Telescope in Chile in December 2003 and January 2004 in the sudwest part of the long drawn disc a brightly radiant area, which contains cheerful chunks than the rest of the cloud.
Infrared view from the cosmic disc around Beta Pictoris (58 degrees turned counterclockwise), right is the brightly luminous area from relatively fresh breakage to recognize
The astronomers ame that the collision, from which the fresh space vallell comes from, has not taken place. The vacuum dust particles were heated by the mother star. The recording shows a very special moment. The collapse of the two relatively rough baby planets can not be long ago, not more than a century, two planetimals banged in each other, both of which could have been as crude as Pluto (Pluto beamed astronomers). The moon circle around the earth should be the product of an equally violent collision in the early season of our solar system (let the moon shine in).
The brightly luminous lump from the planetary break chippings near Beta Pectoris is another indication that a full-grown planet could hide in the slice. In any case, the new study is another step towards the better understanding of the complex process of birth of planets, the incoming examination of other protop planetary slices will certainly follow soon.