                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2021 August 24

                      PDS 70: Disk, Planets, and Moons
               Image Credit: VLT/MUSE (ESO); M. Benisty et al.

   Explanation: It's not the big disk that's attracting the most
   attention. Although the big planet-forming disk around the star PDS 70
   is clearly imaged and itself quite interesting. It's also not the
   planet on the right, just inside the big disk, that’s being talked
   about the most. Although the planet PDS 70c is a newly formed and,
   interestingly, similar in size and mass to Jupiter. It's the fuzzy
   patch around the planet PDS 70c that's causing the commotion. That
   fuzzy patch is thought to be itself a dusty disk that is now forming
   into moons -- and that has never been seen before. The featured image
   was taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) of 66 radio
   telescopes in the high Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Based on ALMA
   data, astronomers infer that the moon-forming exoplanetary disk has a
   radius similar to our Earth's orbit, and may one day form three or so
   Luna-sized moons -- not very different from our Jupiter's four.

               Tomorrow's picture: Earth, Jupiter, or Uranus?
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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