Dust Giant: Hubble Finds Planet Almost 12,000 Times Bigger Than Earth Slowly Forming

Researchers were able to directly image newly forming exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a 13-year span using Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and its Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS). In the top right, Hubble’s NICMOS image captured in 2007 shows AB Aurigae b in a due south position compared to its host star, which is covered by the instrument’s coronagraph. The image captured in 2021 by STIS shows the protoplanet has moved in a counterclockwise motion over time.  (NASA, ESA, Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc./Zenger )

A massive new planet, nine times the size of Jupiter and almost 12,000 times bigger than Earth, is being formed in an intense and violent process that is challenging understanding about planetary formation.

NASA’s Hubble space telescope recorded the new planet, called AB Aurigae b, which is embedded in a disc of gas and dust spiraling around a young star that is about 2 million years old, according to estimates published in the journal Nature Astronomy.