Astronomers confirm youngest known exoplanet Elias 2-24 b
International Business Times UK
Researchers have confirmed Elias 2-24 b, a giant exoplanet less than one million years old, using archived Keck Observatory images compared with ALMA and the Very Large Telescope, the team reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on 16 September. The planet orbits a star about 450 light-years away and remains embedded in its natal gas-and-dust disc, where it is still accreting material and lies inside a protoplanetary disc gap. The object is roughly Jupiter-mass but precise size and luminosity estimates are uncertain; the finding supports the core-accretion formation model and will guide future observations of forming planets.
Elias 2-24 b is a protoplanet still accreting inside its natal disc
Context
Astronomers reanalysed Keck observations from 2018 and 2020 and compared them with ALMA and VLT data. They found a faint source that moved like a planet inside a disc gap. More powerful instruments could observe similar forming planets…
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