We've seen things you people wouldn't believe. An exoplanet building its own moons

Astronomers have for the first time spotted what appears to be a moon-forming ring of matter around a young exoplanet, and described their findings in a paper published on Thursday. Orbiting a star 400 light-years away, PDS 70c is an otherworldly Jupiter-like gas giant that is particularly interesting to planet watchers. …

[Skiron]

Amazing!

"The moon-forming disk measures about the same distance from our Sun to Earth in diameter, and holds enough mass to form up to three satellites the size of the Moon. It’s not clear how many moons will eventually orbit PDS 70c, however."

Bloody mind boggling. And I work with people that can't even read a steel rule!

[UCAP]

Re: Amazing!

The fact that they have been able to image this from 400 lightyears elevates it to the much higher level of completely mind-blowing.

[DJO]

Re: Amazing!

Generally I try to be eloquent and use the language as gracefully as possible, but directly imaging objects 400 ly away I have only one remark:

Fucking incredible!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Amazing!

This is one of the most stunning astronomy pictures I've seen, especially given what it represents.

I wonder if they can get time on the resurrected Hubble for further images?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Amazing!

This image is not something Hubble could make: ALMA works at much longer wavelengths than Hubble: ALMA is millimetre / submillimetre (so hundreds of µm), Hubble goes no longer than about 1.7µm. That doesn't mean Hubble won't be able to make interesting images of this system, but I suspect it won't be able to see the rings as they will be much too cold for it to see. I think these would not even be visible to JWST, although I am less sure of that.

[Lotaresco]

Re: Amazing!

"I wonder if they can get time on the resurrected Hubble for further images?"

An optical image of PDS70b has been captured by ESO's VLT.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Amazing!

"The fact that they have been able to image this from 400 lightyears elevates it to the much higher level of completely mind-blowing."

How mind blowing on the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster scale?, 1 2 or 3 drinks?

(the "Best Drink in Existence."[1] Its effects are similar to "having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick." )

[gandalfcn]

Re: Amazing!

RIP DNA

[DJO]

Re: Amazing!

How mind blowing on the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster scale?, 1 2 or 3 drinks

Zaphod said:

"Never drink more than two Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters unless you are a thirty ton mega elephant with bronchial pneumonia"

[richardcox13]

Re: Amazing!

Is that two total or per head?

[TheGriz]

Re: Whinging humans

If you are saying "send all of our earth-bound waste to Mars, and light it on fire" you really don't know much about interplanetary travel, nor about Mars itself. There is not enough oxygen on Mars to "light a fire" and if we had a "magical way" to turn LEAD into GOLD, that could only be done in space, it still would not be economically feasible to do, because the cost of transporting it off the planet would still out-weigh what you would recoup from the gold magically made. So much for putting all of our waste into orbit, much less to another nearby planet.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: Whinging humans

"So much for putting all of our waste into orbit"

We tried. But Bezos came back.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Whinging humans

IIRC, read some where that if you could change lead into gold, then gold would be much more common and so be devalued which will bugger up the economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Whinging humans

” all the waste we have produced and then lighting it on fire.”

You surely must refer to the rich clowns, as earlier in your post?

[TheGriz]

This is A-Moon-zing!!!

The fact that our telescope technology has progressed to the point, where we can actually "in this great detail" image a ring of material forming moons around an infant exoplanet orbiting another distant star, is mind-blowing, and only makes me even more excited for what we'll see when our newest space telescope, James Webb Space Telescope is successfully launched and boosted into position and begins it's first work imaging our Universe. Can't wait!!!

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/comparisonWebbVsHubble.html

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: This is A-Moon-zing!!!

30years ago we took the first resolved visible images of another star, now we are imaging moons around planets around other stars (admittedly in radio which is a bit easier)

[I am David Jones]

So, how long…

…before a moon is formed? I’ll stick the date in my calendar :)

That’s the problem with astronomy. We essentially only get photographs and not videos. Someone needs to fix this!

[ITS Retired]

Re: So, how long…

Time lapse photography. A picture every hundred years.

[I am David Jones]

Re: So, how long…

Reminds me of that pitch drop experiment or the 10,000-year clock.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: So, how long…

Heh. There's a pitch drop "experiment"/display in my old uni.

It finally fell/broke off. And nobody saw it happen.

[Lotaresco]

Re: So, how long…

"That’s the problem with astronomy. We essentially only get photographs and not videos. Someone needs to fix this!

This is a (brief) timelapse video of a supernova fading captured by Hubble and inserted into a zoomed image of NGC 2525.

[KittenHuffer]

That's no ....

.... moon!

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's no moon!"

[TrueJim]

It's C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate; the article headline makes that clear.

[Anonymous Coward]

The paper

The actual paper is paywalled, but there is a preprint here (PDF link) for anyone interested. ALMA is here.

[DiViDeD]

Re: The paper

It's only paywalled with Javascript enabled. Yet another reason to get rid of the demonic abortion!

[gandalfcn]

But does it make coffee?

[Ste ve]

Seeing the past

The technology here is amazing, but more amazing to me is that they are seeing something that was forming 400 years ago, and it's only after 400 years from now that they will see what it actually looks like at the moment

[Kane]

Re: Seeing the past

"The technology here is amazing, but more amazing to me is that they are seeing something that was forming 400 years ago, and it's only after 400 years from now that they will see what it actually looks like at the moment"

Man, it hurts the brain sometimes thinking about this stuff!

[Ste ve]

Re: Seeing the past

I know - I read this article, and my brain plopped out of my ears and run back under the duvet for more sleep

[Kane]

Re: Seeing the past

"I know - I read this article, and my brain plopped out of my ears and run back under the duvet for more sleep"

I've been watching a lot of Kurzgesagt videos on the 'tubes recently, and one that stood out to me was "The Final Border We Will Never Cross", which absolutely made me go and lie down for a bit and reconsider life in general.

The format of their videos isn't to everyone's liking, but I find it slightly more digestible than some of the other offerings available (thinking PBS Spacetime, Anton Petrov, Dr Becky etc), your YMMV

[Dark Eagle]

If only...

If only I have proper biological hardware, then I too could have appreciated this picture.

[Brad16800]

If you want something done right you got to do it yourself.....