A planetary system similar to our solar system may have been formed in the direction of the constellation Taurus.
Astronomers have already known earlier that the young star DM Taurus, located about 470 light years away from Earth and having an age of 3 to 5 million years with a mass of about half the mass of the Sun, is surrounded by a ring of dust, which is likely to form planets . However, recent observations made with the powerful radio observatory Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array (ALMA), located in Chile, revealed even more interesting details related to this system.
According to some studies, the radius of this ring is approximately equal to the radius of the asteroid belt of our solar system. Other observations, however, reveal that the radius of the ring is close, rather, to the radius of the orbit of Neptune.
Our observations made with the help of the ALMA Observatory give a convincing answer: those and other scientists are right,” added Kudo, who is the main author of the new study. The star of TM Taurus is surrounded not by one, but by two rings having corresponding radii.
-Tomoyuki Kudo, an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
The team also identified a bright spot in the outer ring — a sign that a planet the size of Neptune could form in this ring.
These results were published last November in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. The Kudo team also presented a report on these findings this month at the annual meeting of the Astronomical Society of Japan.
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