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posted by LaminatorX on Saturday September 13 2014, @03:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the now-I-see-you dept.

From Centauri Dreams is an article on evidence of a newly forming planet 335 light years away. The discovery uses a technique called spectro-astrometry:

First developed in the early 1980s, the technique compares the positions of objects through different filters, teasing out information at smaller scales by combining the angular position at two different wavelengths.

There's a preprint of the article available and an associated news release.

The article quotes Dr John Carr (co-author of the paper):

The possibility that we have caught a planet in the act of formation is an exciting result. What makes this work doubly interesting is the evidence that we are seeing gas as it swirls around and flows onto the planet to feed its continuing growth. This could be observational confirmation for the existence of circumplanetary disks that are predicted to surround giant planets at birth

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by davester666 on Saturday September 13 2014, @05:39AM

    by davester666 (155) on Saturday September 13 2014, @05:39AM (#92683)

    It actually formed quite some time ago. We are just happening to notice it now.

    Astronomers are just archeologists that look up instead of down.