Astronomers using Gemini Planet Imager have captured an amazingly clear and bright image of a gas giant orbiting Beta Pictoris.
Gemini Planet Imager captured this first light image of Beta Pictoris b, a planet orbiting the star Beta Pictoris. The star, Beta Pictoris, is blocked in this image by a mask. Image credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Beta Pictoris is the second brightest star in the constellation Pictor, about 63 light years away from Earth. It is orbited by an exoplanet called Beta Pictoris b.
Beta Pictoris b is a young planet, about 20 million years old. It is more than 16 times larger and 3,000 times more massive than Earth.
Using the Gemini Planet Imager’s next-generation, high-contrast adaptive optics system, the astronomers captured a direct image of the planet.
They were also able to refine the estimate of its orbit by looking at the two disks around Beta Pictoris.
Disks, which are made up of dense gas and debris, surround young newly formed stars.
The astronomers observed that the Beta Pictoris b is not aligned with parent star’s main debris disk but is aligned to and potentially interacting with an inner warped component disk.
This is an artist’s impression of Beta Pictoris b. Image credit: Luis Calçada / ESO.
“Our goal is to understand how these planetary systems have developed,” said Dr Lisa Poyneer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who is a co-author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“If Beta Pictoris b is warping the disk, that helps us see how the planet-forming disk in our own solar system might have evolved long ago.”
Dr Poyneer and her colleagues predict that there is a small chance that Beta Pictoris b will transit, that is, partially block its star, as seen from our planet in late 2017.
This would allow a very precise measurement of the planet’s size.
“Gemini Planet Imager also measures the planet’s spectrum, and hence chemical composition. Knowing what it is made of and how big it is will help us figure out how it formed,” Dr Poyneer said.
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Bruce Macintosh et al. 2014. First light of the Gemini Planet Imager. PNAS, published online May 12, 2014; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1304215111
