# Birth of a planet caught on camera



## Damn_Smooth (Oct 22, 2011)

> A SYDNEY scientist has helped capture the first direct images of a planet being formed.
> Dr Michael Ireland, a lecturer in astrophotonics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Macquarie University, and Dr Adam Kraus, of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, have published their discovery of LkCa 15 b, a gas giant similar to Jupiter, in the Astrophysical Journal.
> About 450 light years away from Earth, the planet is the youngest found.
> 
> ...









This is interesting to see. I really wouldn't know what I was looking at if the article didn't explain it to me though. It surprises me that it's so close.


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## mlee49 (Oct 22, 2011)

Old news... like 10 million years old.


lol


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## Damn_Smooth (Oct 22, 2011)

mlee49 said:


> Old news... like 10 million years old.
> 
> 
> lol



Only 450 years.


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## Inceptor (Oct 22, 2011)

Damn_Smooth said:


> This is interesting to see. I really wouldn't know what I was looking at if the article didn't explain it to me though. It surprises me that it's so close.



IIRC, Beta Pictoris, which is also a young star system undergoing planetary formation is much closer, something like ~65 ly and only a few million years old.

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0842/


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## Damn_Smooth (Oct 22, 2011)

Inceptor said:


> IIRC, Beta Pictoris, which is also a young star system undergoing planetary formation is much closer, something like ~65 ly and only a few million years old.
> 
> http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0842/
> 
> http://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/screen/eso0842a.jpg



Hopefully we can get some better pictures of planet formation from this one.


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## Solaris17 (Oct 22, 2011)

mlee49 said:


> Old news... like 10 million years old.
> 
> 
> lol



oh i see what you did!


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## BumbleBee (Oct 22, 2011)

pretty gnarly.


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## The Witcher (Oct 22, 2011)

Birth of a planet....correct me if am wrong, but doesn't it take like a few million years for a planet to form ??? they make it look like it happened in a matter of seconds.


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## BumbleBee (Oct 22, 2011)

Orko was hard at work.


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## de.das.dude (Oct 22, 2011)

mlee49 said:


> Old news... like 10 million years old.
> 
> 
> lol



actually its 450 years old


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## FreedomEclipse (Oct 22, 2011)

I shall name him........

Minime...


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## Damn_Smooth (Oct 22, 2011)

The Witcher said:


> Birth of a planet....correct me if am wrong, but doesn't it take like a few million years for a planet to form ??? they make it look like it happened in a matter of seconds.



Maybe gas planets form faster. That's just a guess though.


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## micropage7 (Oct 23, 2011)

A new picture of a Jupiter-like world swaddled in gas and dust is a direct image of what may be the youngest planet yet seen, astronomers report.

The newborn gas giant, dubbed LkCa 15b, orbits a sunlike star 450 light-years away in the northern constellation Taurus. (Related: "'First' Picture of Planet Orbiting Sunlike Star Confirmed.")

The planet orbits inside a disk of material around the star that's no more than two million years old. By contrast, astronomers estimate our solar system is 4.6 billion years old.




http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/10/111021-youngest-planet-picture-gas-giant-kraus-space-science/?source=link_fb20111022news-youngestplanet


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