VLA sheds light on what could be the very earliest stages in formation of planets

Astronomers using the Very Large Array (VLA) have come up with new images of a young star, revealing what scientists think could be the quite initial stages in the planets’ formation.

The VLA has been used by scientists to witness extraordinary details of the inside part of a dusty disk present around the star, at a distance of around 450 light-years from Earth.

In 2014, scientists used Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study the star and its disk, and at that time, it produced what astronomers dubbed as the best photograph ever, depicting planet formation in progress.

The picture made by ALMA showcased the disk gaps, apparently created by the planet-like bodies sweeping out the dust beside their orbits. The picture has shown that in reality what the theorists have proposed for so long, was astonishing, however, as the star known as HL Tau, is just a million years old, which is quite young by stellar standards.

The latest VLA images have uncovered a different dust clump inside the inner portion of the disk. The scientists said that the clump has nearly 3 to 8 times the mass of our planet.

Thomas Henning of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) said that the dust clump is representative of the most initial stage in the formation of protoplanets. Henning said that it is for the first time that they have received a glance of that stage.

Carlos Carrasco-Gonzalez from the Institute of Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics (IRyA) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) said that the discovery holds lot of significance as so far they haven’t been able to observe lot many stages of the process of planet formation.

He added, "This is different from case of star formation, where, in different objects, we have seen stars in different stages of their life cycle. With planets, we haven't been so fortunate, so getting look at this very early stage in planet formation is extremely valuable”.