An international team of astronomers has reconstructed the collision of two gas planets in the vast space beyond our solar system. The crash created an exoplanet glowing with heat and surrounded by a cloud of debris (pictured above).
The incident was discovered years later and a darkening star played a role. The unique insights into this collision and its consequences have now been published in the scientific journal ‘Nature’, to which the Graz Institute for Space Research (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences also contributed.
In late 2021, a network of telescopes – the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN for short) – observed the dimming of a star later named ASASSN-21qj. This blurring of the visible wavelengths prompted a group of amateur and professional astronomers to take a closer look at the star system.
The brightness of the galaxy has doubled
First author Matthew Kenworthy from Leiden Observatory (Netherlands) started evaluating the light curve of the star system together with Richelle van Capelleveen. In turn, an amateur astronomer discovered in old data from the NEOWISE mission that the brightness of this star system had doubled in the infrared range in mid-2019, about two and a half years before the star began to fade in visible light.
He shared this unusual observation in a social media post, which happened to be read by Kenworthy. The scientist came to the conclusion that this could be a collision of two planets.
Calculations support the theory
According to calculations by co-author Simon Lock of the University of Bristol, the most likely explanation is that two gas planets collided. This collision created a new planet, which explains the infrared glow that NEOWISE captured.
The temperature and size of the glowing material and the duration of the glow also indicate this. The expanding dust cloud that also resulted from the collision moved in front of the star and obscured it, which was visible from Earth two and a half years later. For the first time, astronomers were able to observe not only the heat glow of a newly formed planet, but also the resulting dust cloud.
Observations continue
In the coming years, the dust cloud created by the collision will spread along the orbit of the new planet. The starlight scattered by this cloud should be observable with both ground-based telescopes and the James Webb Space Telescope. Eventually, the dust and gas clouds will likely form moons that will orbit the new planet.
“This is a really fantastic opportunity to find out where such gas planets are made from within,” says exoplanet researcher Ludmila Carone of the IWF, who was also involved in the study. Gas giants normally hide their heavy elements under a thick layer of hydrogen and helium.
Water vapor cools the glowing planet
However, this collision released material that could only have come from the interior. “We can therefore already conclude that a lot of water vapor was released, which cooled the newly formed planet to 1000 Kelvin (almost 730 degrees Celsius, mind you) after the collision.”
Source: Krone
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