News Gossip 24

The James Webb Space Telescope, the largest telescope ever deployed in space, is providing the world with unseen pictures of the universe. It is said that the James Webb Telescope will replace the Hubble Telescope in the coming years, which has been deployed in space for the last 30 years and has shown the world the best pictures of stars, galaxies, etc. It is still doing its job. Its hallmark is visible in a new image. The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a picture of a young star wrapped in a cloud of gas and dust. Researchers clicked this picture with the help of the telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3. It was detected in the constellation Taurus, about 9 thousand light years away from Earth.

This young star, named IRAS 05506 + 2414, is believed to be evidence of an explosive event born of the collision of two massive stars. Usually a young star’s outflow of gas and dust is sent up from the disk of material that orbits the star. But in IRAS 05506+2414, this material is spreading outward at a speed of 350 kilometers per second.

To determine how far away IRAS 05506+2414 is, astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Scientists believe that with this picture they will get a good idea about the brightness and energy of the star. which enables them to estimate the mass of the star. Knowing the mass of this young star is crucial for locating the source of its peculiar outflow.

Scientists recently discovered a baby planet similar to this young star in the constellation Taurus. Astronomers have observed hundreds of disks in the universe, but they have never been able to observe the birth and formation of planets. Feng Long, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics, said that ‘the direct detection of young planets is very challenging and so far only one or two cases have been successful.’ He said that such planets are very difficult to see because they are embedded in thick layers of gas and dust.

Instead, scientists must look for clues that can help them infer that a planet is developing under the cover of dust. Long began his study by re-examining a protoplanetary disk named LkCa 15. It is located about 518 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Taurus. Scientists used observations from the ALMA Observatory to report evidence of planet formation taking place in the disk.

While examining high-resolution ALMA data of LkCa 15, astronomer Long discovered two features. It was not visible earlier. Long detected two bright clusters in the protoplanetary disk. Long found in his study that there is a small planet in about 60 degrees between the two, which is causing the accumulation of dust. It is roughly the size of Neptune and between one and three million years old. That is, it is a new planet. However, due to the lack of technology, direct imaging of this ‘baby’ planet is not possible.