Hot Jupiters are gas giants that orbit at distances less than 0.1 AU from their host star. But what determines the final orbital radius of these planets? In intermediate-mass stars, it seems to be the dispersion of gas in their protoplanetary disks. Hot Jupiters are a class of exoplanets that are not found in our Solar System. They are
The James Webb Telescope (JWST) will be the most complex and powerful telescope ever launched into space. Built by a consortium formed by NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), thanks to its primary mirror with a diameter of 6.5 meters (for comparison, the mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope has a diameter of 2.5 meters) and its four
T Tauri stars are young low-mass stars (typically younger than 5 million of years), which are surrounded by a protoplanetary disk, e.g. a disk of gas and dust orbiting around the star. The disk material does not reach the central star: the dust component sublimates in the inner disk, where the temperature exceeds 1500 degrees, while the gas disk is truncated
At a distance of about 160 light years, the stellar association TW Hydrae is a benchmark for the study of pre-main sequence stars and their protoplanetary disks. Pre-main sequence stars are a few million years old stars, still gravitationally contracting and not powered yet by the thermonuclear reactions. They are often surrounded by disks of dust and gas called “protoplanetary
di Mario Giuseppe Guarcello ( segui mguarce) A recent study by a team of researchers of INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Palermo, the University of Palermo, and the University of Madrid, recently published on the Astrophysical Journal, shows that enormous flares in the young stars in Orion are due to large magnetic loops connecting the stars and their protoplanetary disks,
