{"id":118890,"date":"2020-05-19T14:25:47","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T00:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=118890"},"modified":"2020-05-19T14:25:47","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T00:25:47","slug":"uh-confirms-newborn-planets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2020\/05\/19\/uh-confirms-newborn-planets\/","title":{"rendered":"UH<\/abbr> astronomers help confirm existence of 2 newborn planets"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
\"two
Artist\u2019s impression of PDS<\/abbr> 70 system. Two planets are seen clearing a gap in the protoplanetary disk from which they were born. (Photo credit: W. M. Keck Observatory\/Adam Makarenko)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New evidence shows the first-ever pictures capturing the birth of a pair of planets orbiting the star PDS<\/abbr> 70 are in fact authentic.<\/p>\n

Astronomers from the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Institute for Astronomy<\/a> were part of a Caltech-led team that used a new infrared pyramid wavefront sensor for adaptive optics (AO<\/abbr>) correction at W. M. Keck Observatory<\/a> on Maunakea. The team applied a new method of taking family photos of the baby planets (a.k.a. “protoplanets”) and confirmed their existence.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s results were recently published in The Astronomical Journal<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

PDS<\/abbr> 70 is the first known multi-planetary system where astronomers can witness planet formation in action. The first direct image of one of its planets, PDS<\/abbr> 70b, was taken in 2018 and followed by multiple images taken at different wavelengths of its sibling, PDS<\/abbr> 70c, in 2019. Both Jupiter-like protoplanets were discovered by the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope in Chile.<\/p>\n

“How planets form is one of the great mysteries in modern astronomy, and the baby planets around PDS<\/abbr> 70 are really exciting objects to help figure this out,” said UH<\/abbr> astronomer Michael Liu<\/strong>, a co-author of the study.<\/p>\n

AO<\/abbr> is a technique used to remove the atmospheric blurring that distorts astronomical images. With the new infrared pyramid wavefront sensor and real-time controller installed, Keck Observatory\u2019s AO<\/abbr> system is able to deliver sharper, more detailed images. The infrared pyramid wavefront sensor was built by UH<\/abbr> astronomers Charlotte Bond<\/strong> and Mark Chun<\/strong> working in collaboration with Caltech astronomers. Bond and Chun also co-authored the study.<\/p>\n

According to engineers at Keck Observatory, the new infrared detector technology dramatically improves the ability to study exoplanets and will also allow researchers to improve the quality of AO<\/abbr> correction for harder to image targets located in the center of our galaxy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UH<\/abbr> astronomers are a part of a team that captured never-before-seen images of baby planets from Maunakea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[34,35,1363,659,9,674],"class_list":["post-118890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-astronomy","tag-institute-for-astronomy","tag-manoa-research","tag-maunakea","tag-uh-manoa","tag-w-m-keck-research-laboratory","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118890"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118937,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118890\/revisions\/118937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}