NASA Uncovers Startling New Images of How Alien Planets Form in Dusty Disks

Astronomers have made a startling discovery using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. They've employed a new image processing technique to obtain near-infrared scattered light photos of five disks seen around young stars in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes database. These new images reveal evidence for newly formed planets.

Although image archives may be old, astronomers can review them with new techniques in order to make new discoveries. In this case, the stars were initially targeted with Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) based on unusual heat signatures obtained from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite that flew in 1983. At the time, the data suggested that dusty disks could exist around the stars, but no disks were detected in the NICMOS.

Now, recent improvements in image processing reveal otherwise. The scientists could see the debris disks and even determine their shapes using the new techniques and technology.

"Now, with such new technologies in image processing, we can go back to the archive and conduct research more precisely than previously possible with NICMOS data," said Dean Hines, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The dust in disks around stars is thought to be produced by collisions between small planetary bodies, such as asteroids. The debris is composed of dust particles formed from these crashes, and the tiniest particles are blown outward by radiation pressure from the star. It's thought that these disks are also the formation grounds for planets.

The findings actually increase the number of debris disks seen in scattered light from 18 to 23.  This not only significantly increases the number of debris disks that astronomers can study, but also provides them with new shapes to look at. This, in turn, can allow scientists to learn a bit more about how planetary systems grow and evolve.

"One star that is particularly interesting is HD 141943," said Christine Chen, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It is an exact twin of our sun during the epoch of terrestrial planet formation in our own solar system."

Currently, the researchers plan to search for structures in these dusty disks that suggest the presence of planets.