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Astronomers Find a Giant Hiding in the 'Fog' Around a Young Star
MP MUS STAR SYSTEM, JUL 13 – The giant exoplanet discovery is the first made by the Gaia mission within a protoplanetary disk and may reveal many hidden planets, researchers say.
- An international team led by Cambridge astronomers detected a large gas giant in the protoplanetary disc of the young star MP Mus using ALMA and Gaia data.
- This discovery followed earlier flat, featureless observations of MP Mus’s disc, which seemed odd given the disc's age between seven and ten million years.
- New data uncovered a hollow region close to the young star and two more distant clearings in the disk, with the star’s observed wobble attributed to a gas giant planet orbiting at a distance roughly one to three times that between Earth and the Sun.
- Ribas explained that combining observations from both ALMA and Gaia was essential, highlighting that this approach is crucial because identifying young planets within protoplanetary discs is particularly challenging.
- The findings, published July 14, 2025, in Nature Astronomy, suggest future ALMA upgrades and new telescopes like the ngVLA could uncover more hidden young planets in similar discs.
16 Articles
16 Articles
A young gas giant and hidden substructures in a protoplanetary disk
The detection of planets in protoplanetary disks has proven to be extremely challenging. By contrast, rings and gaps, usually attributed to planet–disk interactions, have been found in virtually every large protoplanetary (Class II) disk observed at 0.9–1.3 mm with sufficient spatial resolution (5 au). The nearby disk around MP Mus (PDS 66) stands as an exception to this rule, and its advanced age (7–10 Myr) is particularly difficult to reconcile
It looked like nothing—then scientists found a world 10x the size of Jupiter
Astronomers have uncovered a massive, hidden exoplanet nestled in the dusty disc of a young star—MP Mus—by combining cutting-edge data from the ALMA observatory and ESA’s Gaia mission. Initially thought to be planet-free, the star’s surrounding disc appeared deceptively empty. But new observations and a telltale stellar “wobble” pointed to a Jupiter-sized gas giant forming within the disc’s obscured gaps. This marks the first time a planet in su…
Three to ten times the size of Jupiter – that is the size of an exoplanet discovered in a gas and dust disk around a young star. So far it has been thought that the star was alone.
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