Media release

From: Springer Nature

The gaseous disk around a young star in the first stages of the assembly process to form a new planetary system is revealed in observations by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, reported in Nature. This likely mimics the conditions that occurred in the very early Solar System and provides an opportunity to study the physical and chemical conditions necessary for planet formation to occur.

It is theorized that terrestrial planets and small bodies like those in our Solar System formed from interstellar solids mixing with rocky solids that condense out from the hot gas around a young host star as that gas cools. However, the specific processes at play remain unclear.

Melissa McClure and colleagues studied HOPS-315, a young star (or protostar) located in the Orion B molecular cloud, around 420 parsecs from Earth. The protostar is positioned in a way that allows a direct view of its inner gaseous disk, through a cavity in its outer envelope. Using infrared and millimetre wavelengths from the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, the authors observe solids starting to condense from the cooling gas, a ‘time zero’ for planet formation. When they compared these observations with models, they suggest that the conditions resemble those necessary for the formation of planets similar to those in the Solar System.

The authors conclude that further study of HOPS-315 may provide further insight into the early stages of planet formation.