Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2023

18 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2023 ASTRO PUBLISHING New image reveals planets birth around V960 Mon by ESO − Bárbara Ferreira A spectacular new image re- leased by the European Southern Observatory gives us clues about how planets as mas- sive as Jupiter could form. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Mil- limeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have detected large dusty clumps, close to a young star, that could collapse to create giant planets. “This discovery is truly cap- tivating as it marks the very first de- tection of clumps around a young star that have the potential to give rise to giant planets,” says Alice Zurlo, a researcher at the Universi- dad Diego Portales, Chile, involved in the observations. The work is based on a mesmerising picture obtained with the Spec- tro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exo- planet REsearch (SPHERE) instru- ment on ESO’s VLT that features fascinating detail of the material around the star V960 Mon. This young star is located over 5,000 A t the centre of this image is the young star V960 Mon, located over 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. Dusty ma- terial with potential to form planets surrounds the star. [ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Weber et al.] light-years away in the constellation Monoceros and attracted as- tronomers’ attention when it sud- denly increased its brightness more than twenty times in 2014. SPHERE observations taken shortly after the onset of this brightness ‘outburst’ revealed that the material orbiting V960 Mon is assembling together in a series of intricate spiral arms ex-