Astronomers have captured a real image of a planet with two suns, reminiscent of Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine from the Star Wars saga. This is a remarkable achievement as it is the first time a direct image of a circumbinary planet – a planet orbiting two stars – has been obtained. The planet, named GW Orionis, is located 1,300 light-years away from Earth and is younger than the dinosaurs, with an estimated age of just one million years.
The image was captured by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and is a significant milestone in the study of planetary formation and solar systems. The planet’s two stars orbit each other closely, while the planet orbits the pair at a greater distance. This complex dance creates a gravitational pull that warps and twists the planet-forming disc surrounding the stars.
In terms of size, the circumbinary planet GW Orionis is vast, with a mass about 10 times that of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Its orbit is also unique, being tilted at an angle of 46 degrees to the plane of the binary star’s orbit. This suggests that the planet’s formation was a tumultuous process, likely the result of the gravitational forces exerted by the two stars.
The system’s disc is also unusual, with three separate and misaligned rings of dust. The inner ring, which is also the most massive, is tilted in a different direction from the other two. The outermost ring is the largest ever observed in a planet-forming disc, with a diameter of 338 astronomical units (AU, the distance from the Earth to the Sun).
The discovery of GW Orionis offers valuable insights into the formation of planets and solar systems. It challenges existing models of planet formation, as the direction and alignment of the rings suggest that the planet’s formation might have been influenced by the binary star’s gravitational effects.
The team of astronomers will continue studying the GW Orionis system to gain more understanding of its unique characteristics and the implications for planet formation theories. As technology advances, more direct images of such planets could potentially be captured, opening up new possibilities for the study of these fascinating celestial bodies.
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