When you first find out about a planet that’s surrounded by a disc, the first thing that pops into mind if you’re at least a bit passionate about astronomy is the planet Saturn from our own Solar System. But not all discs that surround a planet are made of remnants of asteroids, comets, and shattered moons.
A new article posted on SciTechDaily.com speaks about a disc that surrounds the exoplanet known as PDS 70c, which revolved around a star located roughly 400 light-years away from us. For the unfathomable vastness of the Universe, that measurement is like just moving to a nearby town. But for us as humans beings, it’s impossible to traverse.
The disc surrounds PDS 70c for creating moons
Just like our Earth has the Moon, other planets have one or even more moons revolving around them. Saturn, for instance, is the champion of the Solar System judging by this criterion. The gas giant has 82 discovered moons.
The “ring” surrounding PDS 70c acts as the right environment for new moons to form. The diameter of the disc is comparable in size to the distance that separates the Earth from the Sun.
Astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard $ Smithsonian have contributed to the detection of the region that leads to moon formation.
Myriam Benisty, who’s a researcher from the University of Grenoble and also from the University of Chile, declared as quoted by SciTechDaily.com:
Our work presents a clear detection of a disk in which satellites could be forming,
Our ALMA observations were obtained at such exquisite resolution that we could clearly identify that the disk is associated with the planet and we are able to constrain its size for the first time.
The new findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
