The Hubble Space Telescope has taken photos of a new Jupiter-like protoplanet that is being formed through an “intense and violent process”, according to researchers.

The new planet – known as AB Aurigae b – is embedded in a disk of dust and gas with a distinct spiral structure, surrounding a young star that’s estimated to be only around 2m years old. Planets likely began to form in our own solar system when the solar system was a similar age around 4.6bn years ago.

The protoplanet is estimated to be around nine times larger than Jupiter and orbits its host star at a distance of 8.6bn miles, which is two times farther than Pluto is from our sun. Researchers said it would take a very long time for a Jupiter-sized planet (also called jovian planets) to form through usual methods at this distance.

“Nature is clever; it can produce planets in a range of different ways,” lead researcher of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, Thayne Currie, said.

How are Jupiter-like planets formed?

All planets are made from material in the circumstellar disk, which is an accumulation of matter in orbit around a star.

The current dominant theory for how planets like Jupiter and Saturn form is through a process called “core accretion”. This is a bottom-up approach where planets embedded in the disk grow from small objects which collide together.

In contrast, the other theory called “disk instability” is a top-down model. In this theory, as a massive disk around a star cools, gravity causes the disk to rapidly break up into one or more planet-mass fragments.

The researchers believe that disk instability has enabled the planet to form at such a great distance from its sun, which is a contrast to the widely accepted core accretion model of jovian planet formation.

“This new discovery is strong evidence that some gas giant planets can form by the disk instability mechanism,” Carnegie Science observational astronomer Alan Boss said. “In the end, gravity is all that counts, as the leftovers of the star-formation process will end up being pulled together by gravity to form planets, one way or the other.”

Currie said the NASA and European Space Agency’s Hubble Space Telescope played an important role in the project, as it was able to provide “a clean image to better separate the light from the disk and any planet”. The team compared Hubble’s data to imaging provided by Japan’s Subaru Telescope located in Hawaii.

The team believes that understanding the early days of the formation of Jupiter-like planets can help astronomers understand our own solar system’s history.

This research also paves the way for future studies of the chemical make-up of protoplanetary disks like AB Aurigae, with the help of Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope.

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