University of Victoria researchers are taking a new look at the stars, with the UVic team part of a groundbreaking discovery about planetary formation.  

The Canadian-led team of international astronomers made the discovery by leveraging a unique approach with tools from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The researchers used the telescope to study PDS 70 鈥� a young star orbited by two growing planets.  

鈥淭his is like seeing a family photo of our solar system when it was just a toddler,鈥� says Dori Blakely, a University of Victoria PhD candidate who led the research. 鈥淚t鈥檚 incredible to think about how much we can learn from one system.鈥� 

The system can be found 370 light-years away from Earth and provides scientists with a rare opportunity to see how planets form and evolve in their early stages.

Their research provides evidence for a process called 鈥渁ccretion鈥� wherein planets wrangle material from their host star, pulling in mass from the gas and dust around them.  

By watching the planets surrounding PDS-70 grow and interact with their environment, their discoveries provide a clearer picture of how planets and stars grow together and helped scientists learn how planetary systems came to be 鈥� including our own.  

鈥淪eeing planets in the act of accreting material helps us answer longstanding questions about how planetary systems form and evolve. It鈥檚 like watching a solar system being built before our very eyes,鈥� says Doug Johnstone, an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and principal research officer at the National Research Council of Canada鈥檚 Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre. 

The young star, approximately five million years old, is surrounded by a pancake-like disk of gas and dust. In a large gap at the centre, the two new planets 鈥� PDS 70 b and PDS 70 c 鈥� are beginning to form. 

To get a clear view of the planets the team covered the telescope's near-infared image and slitless spectrograph (NRISS) with a mask covered in tiny holes. The holes allowed a tiny amount of light to pass through, essentially 鈥渢urning down the young star鈥檚 blinding spotlight so you can see the details of what鈥檚 around it,鈥� said Professor Rene Doyon, director of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets and principal investigator for JWST鈥檚 NIRISS instrument. 

Their unique approach allowed the team to observe details that would have been lost in traditional telescope imaging and continues to demonstrate the power of the JWST as a tool for planetary study.