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SPACE CHRONICLES“Moon forming”
circumplanetary disk in
a distant star system
A
LMA image of the dust in
PDS 70 , a star system located
approximately 370 light-years
from Earth. Two faint smudges in
the gap region of this disk are as-
sociated with newly formed plan-
ets. One such concentration of
dust is a circumplanetary disk, the
first such feature ever detected
around a distant star. [ALMA
(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); A. Isella]A
stronomers using the Ata-
cama Large Millimeter/sub-
millimeter Array (ALMA)
have made the first-ever observa-
tions of a circumplanetary disk,
the planet-girding belt of dust
and gas that astronomers strongly
theorize controls the formation
of planets and gives rise to an en-
tire system of moons, like the one
found around Jupiter. This young
star system, PDS 70 , is located ap-
proximately 370 light-years from
Earth. Recently, astronomers con-
firmed the presence of two mas-
sive, Jupiter-like planets in orbit
around the star.
This discovery was made with the
European Southern Observatory’s
Very Large Telescope (VLT), which
detected the warm glow natu-by ALMA Observatory
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