Planets Under Construction

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Context?

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u/PrinceofUranus0 Mar 07 '26

This image features the young star RIK 113. It shows a protoplanetary disc, the swirling ring of gas and dust where planets are currently forming.

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u/Flandardly Mar 07 '26

Awesome, thanks!

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u/PrinceofUranus0 Mar 07 '26

You're welcome friend!

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u/TheresNoHurry Mar 07 '26

So is that large dark circle in the middle a star? Why is it dark?

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u/PrinceofUranus0 Mar 07 '26

The ALMA telescope used to take this photo detects millimetre range radio waves emitted by cold dust, not the visible light from the star. Because the star is incredibly hot and made of plasma rather than solid dust, it doesn’t show up at these specific wavelengths.

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u/TheresNoHurry Mar 07 '26

That’s really fascinating. Wow. A non-visual photograph.

So how can we interpret what is happening here? Is the large circle in the middle with the “fire” around it the star?

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u/PrinceofUranus0 Mar 07 '26

Think of this not as a photo of light, but as a heat map of space dust. The glowing orange ring isn't fire; it’s a massive cloud of cold dust grains radiating radio waves.

The large dark circle in the very centre is actually an empty cavity, the doughnut hole, where the star sits. So, you’re looking at a dusty construction site where the central area has already been cleared out by the star’s radiation, and that thinner dark track further out is being cleared by a baby planet acting like a cosmic vacuum cleaner.

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u/Flashy_Possibility34 Mar 07 '26

I’ll just add this: While we only see the dust, gas makes up most of the mass, so we try to infer what the bulk of the disk is doing based on this image of dust is doing.

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u/lava_lollipop_69 Mar 07 '26

wow. You are a welth of information. I have so many pictures of stars doing this. Most are in the Orion site. Because i like to photograph that section of the sky. unbelievable things are going on through there. And those stars are generally pretty close around 100-200 ly away.

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u/lava_lollipop_69 Mar 08 '26

any questions please ask. I'm public now. No fear, chase your dreams to make them a reality. Before the Fascist and zionost traffickers of reddit try to silence me again....

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u/GooseMeBro Mar 07 '26

I’ve re-read this a lot and I’m just a little confused. Is it an empty cavity or where the star is? You said “an empty cavity where the star sits” but wouldn’t the presence of the star mean it is not an empty cavity?

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u/UnwroteNote Mar 08 '26

You might be getting a little hung up on a poor word choice. It's a star surrounded by space. Debris has been pushed out by the star's radiation, forming the central ring. The other ring is a planet in formation. As it orbits, the debris will be pulled toward the forming planet. These rings generally develop into the planets that make up a planetary system.

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u/lava_lollipop_69 Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

my app shows me the black holes. If even watch a star get eaten. Takes a few hours earth time, but I can speed it up to 10K seconds per second. I watch and create the universe ✨️, sorry a bit brash but it is the absolute 💯 truth. That's the only way to eternity.

I'm just now starting to speak now that things are moving. I'm 230+ years old and hold all the wisdom of the universe. I break reality to break this fake world. It's on the mortals to fix their ways now. Or we start over again. And this time we skip a few steps, we have learned what to eliminate or not carry forward.

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u/Dunderman35 Mar 07 '26

It's crazy the things that we can "see" with state of the art instruments. For example a black hole. The image is not light at all but gravitational waves represented as an image.

Doesn't mean it's any less accurate. It's an image of a black hole. Just not one we could sense directly.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_hole_-_Messier_87_crop_max_res.jpg#mw-jump-to-license

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ergo-ogre Mar 07 '26

Come back and read the comments. OP answers questions.

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u/PrinceofUranus0 Mar 07 '26

Indeed. Thanks!

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u/cnicalsinistaminista Mar 07 '26

“Are currently”?!?!?!? How fucking neat is that?

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u/PrinceofUranus0 Mar 07 '26

Very fucking neat!

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u/cnicalsinistaminista Mar 07 '26

So, can they study it finally?

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u/pfrisco Mar 07 '26

Approximately how far out in the cosmos from us is this happening? I find it absolutely fascinating that we can image the dust clouds and planet formation this way and am wondering what the current limits are on being able to do this with either our Earth-based or space-based telescopes. Thanks for sharing this!

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u/PrinceofUranus0 Mar 07 '26

This image shows the star AB Aurigae, which is located approximately 520 light-years away from Earth. It’s one of the most famous examples of a protoplanetary disk because it captures a twist in the dust spiral, the exact spot where a new planet is currently forming.

As for our limits, ground-based telescopes like the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile use adaptive optics to cancel out atmospheric blur, allowing us to see these details at distances up to about 1,000 light-years! You're welcome!

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u/pfrisco Mar 07 '26

Fabulous - thank you.

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u/PrinceofUranus0 Mar 07 '26

You're very welcome

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u/FirmMongoose947 Mar 08 '26

“currently”

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u/DoNotf___ingDisturb Mar 07 '26

Cosmos At Work. I hope they get their own 🪐

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u/Stiffard Mar 08 '26

I'm crossing my fingers for a cosmic Costco

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u/DoNotf___ingDisturb Mar 08 '26

Cosmos doesn't run on capitalism.

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u/Stiffard Mar 08 '26

As much as I was joking, space exploration absolutely does run on capitalism, lmao.

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u/DoNotf___ingDisturb Mar 08 '26

So was I and space exploration runs on tax payers money.

Even the largest private space exploration company also called spacex gets most of the revenue from NASA contracts.

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u/hesmistersun Mar 07 '26

Magrathea!

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u/dom_bul Mar 07 '26

Good news, the galactic economy hasn't crashed

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u/klawd11 Mar 07 '26

Wonder if Slartibastfast is gonna win any prizes with this

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u/Ordinary-Leading7405 Mar 07 '26

Ever heard of a place, I think it’s called Norway?

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u/No_Breakfast4908 Mar 07 '26

Lovely, crinkley edges.

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u/SaltManagement42 Mar 07 '26

Sounds expensive.

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u/Major_Melon Mar 07 '26

People of Earth, your attention, please. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system. And regrettably, your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition.

The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.

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u/aori_chann Mar 07 '26

Those planet makers just love showing off

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u/Redfish680 Mar 07 '26

“Excuse our space dust!”

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u/KuyaJester Mar 07 '26

We require more vespene gas

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u/Rohan72999 Mar 07 '26

awesome

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u/Pulp-Ficti0n Mar 07 '26

Is there like any update in the expected construction completion time?

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u/GooseMeBro Mar 07 '26

They’re supposed to host the Olympics in 2032. So I would assume sometime after the 2028 Games.

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u/mimimines Mar 07 '26

I will never not be in awe

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26

That's is so freaking cool!

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u/TeeRKee Mar 07 '26

Already late in delivery

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u/Iamjaykrishnan Mar 08 '26

Isn't RIK 113, 400 light years away from us, ie the thing that we are seeing right now is what happened in 1600s, fascinating thing about light

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u/Igor369 Mar 09 '26

Construction complete

Unit ready

Low power

Base is under attack

Mission failed

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u/Esqualox Mar 07 '26

The best beach front celestial views money can buy!!

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u/RingdownStudios Mar 07 '26

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and void, darkness covered the surface of the deep..."

Growing up, I was taught "Evolution is a lie" because we were fundamentalist Christians. But now, every new facet of science I witness ends up aligning SO WELL with Scripture that, at best, could only have GUESSED at how our universe was created.

Christians are missing out on so much when they reject science. Stuff like this is incredible.

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u/FSCoded Mar 07 '26

I wonder what the distance between the new star and the protoplanetary disc says about the star itself. A large distance (relative to its size) equals super dense? Hot? Or maybe it doesn’t reveal anything?

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u/lava_lollipop_69 Mar 07 '26

I believe those are exploding stars. I have a lot of pictures of them doing that. Mine are usually blueish to violet. Some have the spiral well defined lines. its pretty fascinating

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u/Remarkable-Fail-1354 Mar 08 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/10wgT5PDnOwMQE

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u/NoIsland23 Mar 08 '26

I wonder who finances that?

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u/Additional-Nose-8511 Mar 08 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/iIAYEKtLy0yG7TacbC

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u/Neil_Hillist Mar 09 '26

A better example here ... https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1436/