An article accepted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the results of a study of the young system of HD 53143, in which a Sun-like star is surrounded by a disk of materials with a structure different from all those known so far which could include a planet. A team of researchers used the ALMA radio telescope to study that disk, which is very eccentric instead of being circular with the star in its center. The disk around HD 53143 has an elliptical shape and the star is in one of the foci of the ellipse, far from the center. The results were presented at the 240th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) held these days in Pasadena, California.

An article accepted for publication in the journal “Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan” reports the discovery of the exoplanet Ross 508 b, probably a super-Earth at the edge of ​​its star system’s habitable zone. A team of researchers led by Hiroki Harakawa used the IRD (InfraRed Doppler) instrument mounted on the Subaru Telescope to examine the star Ross 508, a red dwarf that has a mass that is only 18% of the Sun’s. The radial velocity method allowed to identify what from the collected data looks like a rocky planet with a mass that is about 4 times the Earth’s. This discovery confirms the value of infrared spectroscopic examinations of red dwarfs.

An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” reports a study on the protoplanet cataloged as AB Aurigae b, a gas giant that is growing following an unusual process called disk instability. A team of researchers used observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, between 2007 and 2021 to find evidence of that violent formation. Proving that gas giants can form as a result of disk instability will help better understand the history of the solar system as well.