infrared Subaru telescope in Hawaii, an international team of astronomers have photographed a giant planet around the star ‘GJ 504′. Several times the mass of Jupiter and of similar size, the new world, called ‘GJ 504b’, is the lowest-mass planet ever observed by direct imaging techniques that orbits a star like the sun .
“If we could travel to the giant planet, we would see a world still glowing from the heat of his training color reminiscent of a black cherry , a magenta color,” says Michael McElwain, one discovery team member from NASA.
According to the most widely accepted theory, Jupiter-like planets have their onset in the gas surrounding a young star. A core produced by collisions between asteroids and comets provides a seed and, when this core reaches sufficient mass, its gravity quickly attracts gas from the disk to form the planet.
“This is one of the planets most difficult to explain within a framework of traditional planet formation,” said team member Markus Janson a Hubble postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University in New Jersey. “This discovery means we have to training seriously consider alternative theories , or perhaps re-evaluate some of the basic assumptions of the core accretion theory.”
Direct imaging is probably the most important technique for observing planets around other stars, but also the most difficult.
“This technique provides information about the planet, luminosity, temperature, atmosphere and orbit, but the planets are so weak and so close to their parent stars is like trying to take a picture of a firefly near a lighthouse “says Masayuki Kuzuhara at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, director of the research team of the publication ‘The Astrophysical Journal’.
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