ALMA Campaign Provides Unprecedented Views of the Birth of Planets
Astronomers have already cataloged nearly 4,000 exoplanets in orbit around distant stars. Though we have learned much about these newfound worlds, there is still much we do not know about the steps of planet formation and the precise cosmic recipes that spawn the wide array of planetary bodies we have already uncovered, including so-called hot Jupiters, massive rocky worlds, icy dwarf planets, and – hopefully someday soon – distant analogs of Earth.
To help answer these and other intriguing questions about the birth of planets, a team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has conducted one of the deepest surveys ever of protoplanetary disks, the planet-forming dust belts around young stars.
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ALMA’s
high-resolution images of nearby protoplanetary disks, which are results of the
Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), S.
Andrews et al.; N. Lira
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“This specific Large Programis important because it takes one of the fundamental science goals of ALMA, which is to understand the process of planet formation and takes it from previous studies, which were either very small samples or single objects, to a completely new context, allowing statistical views” explains Stuartt Corder, Deputy Director of ALMA; “Are these kinds of structures common or rare? This more statistical approach allows researchers to answer questions that are much more fundamental to the process of planet formation.”
Known as the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP), this Large Programof ALMA has yielded stunning, high-resolution images of 20 nearby protoplanetary disks and given astronomers new insights into the variety of features they contain and the speed with which planets can emerge.
The results of this survey are contained in a series of ten papers that are accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
According to the researchers, the most compelling interpretation of these observations is that large planets, likely similar in size and composition to Neptune or Saturn, form quickly, much faster than current theory would indicate. The also tend to form in the outer reaches of their solar systems at tremendous distances from their host stars.
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Animated GIF
showing the ALMA images of 20 protoplanetary disks observed by DSHARP project. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Andrews
et al.; N. Lira.
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Such precocious formation could also help explain how rocky, Earth-size worlds are able to evolve and grow, surviving their presumed self-destructive adolescence.
“The goal of this months-long observing campaign was to search for structural commonalities and differences in protoplanetary disks. ALMA’s remarkably sharp vision has revealed previously unseen structures and unexpectedly complex patterns,” said Sean Andrews, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and a leader of the ALMA observing campaign along with Andrea Isella of Rice University, Laura Pérez of the University of Chile, and Cornelis Dullemond of Heidelberg University. “We are seeing distinct details around a wide assortment of young stars of various masses. The most compelling interpretation of these highly diverse, small-scale features is that there are unseen planets interacting with the disk material.”
The leading models for planet formation hold that planets are born by the gradual accumulation of dust and gas inside a protoplanetary disk, beginning with grains of dust that coalesce to form larger and larger rocks, until asteroids, planetesimals, and planets emerge. This hierarchical process should take many millions of years to unfold, suggesting that its impact on protoplanetary disks would be most prevalent in older, more mature systems. Mounting evidence, however, indicates that is not always the case.
ALMA’s early observations of young protoplanetary disks, some only about one million years old, reveal striking and surprising structures, including prominent rings and gaps, which appear to be the hallmarks of planets. Astronomers were initially cautious to ascribe these features to the actions of planets since other natural process could be at play.
“It was surprising to see possible signatures of planet formation in the very first high-resolution images of young disks. It was important to find out whether these were anomalies or if those signatures were common in disks,” said Jane Huang, a graduate student at CfA and a member of the research team.
Since the sample set was so small, however, it was impossible to draw any overarching conclusions. It could have been that astronomers were observing atypical systems. More observations on a variety of protoplanetary disks were needed to determine the most likely cause of the features we were seeing.
The DSHARP campaign was designed to do precisely that by studying the relatively small-scale distribution of dust particles around 20 nearby protoplanetary disks. These dust particles naturally glow in millimeter-wavelength light, enabling ALMA to precisely map the density distribution of small, solid particles around young stars.
Depending on the star’s distance from Earth, ALMA was able to distinguish features as small as a few Astronomical Units(An Astronomical Unit is the average distance of the Earth to the Sun – about 150 million kilometers, which is a useful scale for measuring distances on the scale of star systems). Using these observations, the researchers were able to image an entire population of nearby protoplanetary disks and study their AU-scale features.
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ALMA's high-resolution images of nearby protoplanetary disks,
which are results of the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project
(DSHARP). Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), S. Andrews et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S.
Dagnello
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The researchers found that many substructures – concentric gaps, narrow rings – are common to nearly all the disks, while large-scale spiral patterns and arc-like features are also present in some of the cases. Also, the disks and gaps are present at a wide range of distances from their host stars, from a few AU to more than 100 AU, which is more than three times the distance of Neptune from our Sun.
These features, which could be the imprint of large planets, may explain how rocky Earth-like planets are able to form and grow. For decades, astronomers have puzzled over a major hurdle in planet-formation theory: Once planetesimals grow to a certain size – about one kilometer is diameter – the dynamics of a smooth protoplanetary disk would induce them to fall in on their host star, never acquiring the mass necessary to form planets like Mars, Venus, and Earth.
The dense rings of dust we now see with ALMA would produce a safe haven for rocky worlds to fully mature. Their higher densities and the concentration of dust particles would create perturbations in the disk, forming zones where planetesimals would have more time to grow into fully fledged planets.
“When ALMA truly revealed its capabilities with its iconic image of HL Tau, we had to wonder if that was an outlier since the disk was comparatively massive and young,” noted Laura Perez with the University of Chile and a member of the research team. “These latest observations show that, though striking, HL Tau is far from unusual and may actually represent the normal evolution of planets around young stars.”
Planets
Forming around a Young Star. Credit: NRAO Outreach
ALMA Timelapse
for Afterite Ballet from ALMA Observatory. Credit: NRAO Outreach
Reel drone
flight over ALMA antennas from ALMA Observatory on Vimeo. Credit: NRAO Outreach
Source: ALMA,
