2025年8月27日
WISPIT 2b: Exoplanet Carves Gap in Birth Disk
Image Credit: ESO, VLT, SPHERE;
Processing & Copyright: ESO, Richelle van Capelleveen (Leiden Obs.) et al.;
Text: Ogetay Kayali (MTU)
Explanation: That yellow spot — what is it? It’s a young planet outside our Solar System. The featured image from the Very Large Telescope in Chile surprisingly captures a distant scene much like our own Solar System’s birth, some 4.5 billion years ago. Although we can’t look into the past and see Earth’s formation directly, telescopes let us watch similar processes unfolding around distant stars. At the center of this frame lies a young Sun-like star, hidden behind a coronagraph that blocks its bright glare. Surrounding the star is a bright, dusty protoplanetary disk — the raw material of planets. Gaps and concentric rings mark where a newborn world is gathering gas and dust under its gravity, clearing the way as it orbits the star. Although astronomers have imaged disk-embedded planets before, this is the first-ever observation of an exoplanet actively carving a gap within a disk — the earliest direct glimpse of planetary sculpting in action.
Tomorrow’s picture: misty galaxy
WISPIT 2b: 系外行星在形成盘中雕刻出空隙
影像提供: ESO, VLT, SPHERE;
处理与版权: ESO, Richelle van Capelleveen (Leiden Obs.) et al.;
文稿: Ogetay Kayali (MTU)
说明: 那个黄色斑点是什么？它是一颗位于我们太阳系之外的年轻行星。这张精选影像来自位于智利的甚大望远镜，令人惊讶地捕捉到一个遥远的场景，这个场景很像我们太阳系在大约45亿年前诞生时的样子。虽然我们无法直接回到过去观看地球的形成，但望远镜让我们观察到类似的过程在遥远的恒星周围展开。在这幅影像的中心是一颗年轻的类太阳恒星，隐藏在日冕仪后方，该仪器阻挡了它明亮的光芒。环绕这颗恒星的是一个明亮的、尘埃密布的原行星盘，这是形成行星的原始材料。缝隙和同心环标示出一个新生行星正在其重力作用下聚集气体和尘埃，并在其绕恒星运行时清理出一条道路。虽然天文学家以前曾拍摄过嵌在盘中的行星，但这是首次观测到一颗系外行星在盘中积极开辟缝隙的情景，这是最早直接观察到行星雕刻过程的记录行星雕刻活动的最早直接一瞥。
明日的图片: misty galaxy
