An artist's illustration shows a massive, newly forming exoplanet called AB Aurigae b. Researchers used new and archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Subaru Telescope to confirm this protoplanet is forming through an intense and violent process, called disk instability. AB Aurigae b is estimated to be about nine times more massive than Jupiter and orbits its host star over two times farther than Pluto is from our sun. NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)/Handout via REUTERS.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have observed an enormous planet about nine times the mass of Jupiter at a remarkably early stage of formation - describing it as still in the womb - in a discovery that challenges the current understanding of planetary formation.
The researchers used the Subaru Telescope located near the summit of an inactive Hawaiian volcano and the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope to detect and study the planet, a gas giant orbiting unusually far from its young host star. Gas giants are planets, like our solar system's largest ones Jupiter and Saturn, composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, with swirling gases surrounding a smaller solid core.
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