Astronomers from India have made an interesting discovery in a unique three-star solar system located 489 light years away from Earth. This discovery will help astronomers better understand the structure of the planets.
Astronomers from the National Institute of Science Education and Research or NISER in Odisha made the discovery using the Advanced Radio Telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Their observations, made over time, reveal fascinating insights into the complexities of planetary formation.
The three-star system being observed was the ‘GG Tau A’ solar system which is in its early stages of planet formation. It is believed that this system is about 50 lakh years old. What makes it unique is that it has three ‘suns’ with a giant protoplanetary disk – a rotating disk of gas and dust that forms around a young star and provides material for the formation of new planets. Is.
Because all three stars orbit each other, the giant ring of gas and dust that will form the planets over time causes the stars’ gravity to cause their orbital patterns to change significantly, giving scientists fascinating insights.
What have Indian astronomers discovered?
The NISER team of astronomers was led by scientist Liton Mazumdar, who is also a visiting scientist at NASA. His areas of expertise are star and planet formation, astrochemistry and exoplanet studies.
He and his team have detected molecular emissions from protoplanetary disks, the basic building blocks of planets. These emissions were found to originate in the coldest and densest regions of the star system.
The team of researchers conducted their research in these coldest parts of the triple star system, where temperatures are thought to reach up to 16 Kelvin, or -257.15 degrees Celsius – well below the freezing point of carbon monoxide – which is important for scientists to find out. Is. Mass of gas during planetary formation. The chemical structure of carbon monoxide – CO – carries carbon and oxygen, and reacts with other gases to form compounds such as CH4 (methane). Its bright color helps astronomers create models of protoplanetary disks.
Insights from Search
While scientists are also studying single star solar systems like ours and binary star systems like Alpha Centauri, understanding the complexities of a triple star system is unique, and the GG Tau A star system is helped by its proximity to our solar system. Answer major questions in astrophysics.
It also helps to understand the fundamental nature of planet formation under the complexities caused by the gravity of the three host stars.
Gravity, temperature, mass (energy), pressure and frequency are key aspects of physics and studying them in a three-star system provides scientists with the challenge and opportunity to make unprecedented discoveries in such complex conditions.
Radio telescope in the Atacama Desert, Chile
Astronomers from India used the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment or Apex radio telescope – one of the tallest telescopes on Earth – located at an altitude of 5,064 meters above sea level in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
The facility was built and is operated by three European research institutes – the European Southern Observatory, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and the Onsala Space Observatory.
The Apex telescope is a modified ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) prototype antenna and is on the site of the ALMA Observatory.
The ALMA telescope, also located in the Atacama Desert in Chile, is an astronomical interferometer of 66 radio telescopes that observe electromagnetic radiation from space at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.
