"Caution: Planets under construction": Planetary Disc of Star RIK 113 | ESO
This picture is a close-up of the star RIK 113 in the constellation Scorpius around 431 light-years away. It is surrounded by a cloud of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disc. These discs are a common feature around young stars, containing all the building blocks needed to make a new planet. Over time, these dusty discs will fragment and condense under the influence of gravity, forming larger objects like protoplanets. These planetary embryos carve out gaps in the dust around them, forming the intricate, ring-like structures that we can see in this disc.
This telescopic image showing two concentric orange rings. The inner ring is brighter and has swirling features around it. The outer ring is fainter and fuzzier.
The true complexity of this protoplanetary disc was first uncovered by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in a study published last year. These results showed the presence of a gap. This hinted at a planet-like object embedded within it.
This prompted another team of astronomers, led by Christian Ginski at the University of Galway, Ireland, to follow up with observations from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT). Using the SPHERE instrument they found that the inner ring has intriguing spiral features. A detailed analysis of the data uncovered not just one, but two potential signals from planets around RIK 113, not far from the original detection with ALMA.
For now, these signals are still more of a suggestion than a direct confirmation. However, with two separate studies from both ALMA and the VLT indicating the presence of at least one planet, these results are extremely promising for a future discovery.
Release Date: June 9, 2025
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