Astronomers found Jupiter's young cousin

51 Eridani b as an artist

Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet resembling Jupiter at a very early stage of formation - its age is only about 20 million years. Planet 51 Eridanus b is 100 light years away, in the constellation Eridanus.

20 million years is actually very little. It turns out that dinosaurs on earth died out 45 million years before its formation. Thanks to a successful discovery, astronomers can find out the details of the formation of such planets - especially since this planet, unlike most other exoplanets, is available for direct observation.

Spectral analysis of the light reflected from it showed that its composition is similar to the composition of our gas giant, Jupiter. But the newborn planet is twice as heavy as it is, and the radius of its orbit is 13 times larger than the radius of the orbit of Jupiter (somewhere between Saturn and Neptune).
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Portrait of baby

The special joy of this discovery is that this is the first exoplanet discovered with the help of a new instrument, Gemini Planet Imager (GPI). This is a tool for high-contrast images, built on the basis of the 8-meter Chilean telescope. The project, launched at the end of 2014, is intended for direct observation of exoplanets, and uses for this adaptive optics.

“51 Eridani b is the first young planet that looks like Jupiter billions of years ago. This is the most important piece of knowledge from our puzzle describing the formation of planets, - commented the discovery of Travis Barman, a planetologist from the University of Arizona. “Since the discovery of the first exoplanet, we have been looking for methane, since it would indicate the presence of processes similar to those of our gas giants.” Finding such a methane-rich atmosphere using GPI so quickly was very inspiring. ”