Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.
Astronomers are hunting for planets in the process of forming around infant stars using the James Webb Space Telescope . The powerful space telescope quickly delivered the goods, albeit in an unexpected way., gathering more mass as they do so. Humanity has imaged many of these protoplanetary disks, but astronomers have only glimpsed the forming planets within them a few times to date.
In the protoplanetary disk around SAO 206462, the team spotted the signals of a forming planet, but with a twist: It wasn't the planet they were expecting to see. "When material falls onto the planet, it shocks at the surface and gives off an emission line at specific wavelengths," Cugno said."We use a set of narrow-band filters to try to detect this accretion. This has been done before from the ground at optical wavelengths, but this is the first time it's been done in the infrared with JWST."
With an estimated age of no more than 1 million years , HL Tau is the youngest star in the JWST protoplanetary disk investigation. This possible planet and any others failed to manifest in the team's study, but the sensitivity and power of the JWST did allow them to put constraints on any potential forming planets within this protoplanetary disk. This included ruling out the possibility that there are planets on the outskirts of the disk, far from the star MWC 758.
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