Hubble’s Inside the Image: Protoplanetary Disks

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured stunning images of protoplanetary disks—dynamic, swirling structures of gas and dust surrounding young stars.

In this video, Dr. Padi Boyd takes us on a journey through these remarkable objects, explaining how Hubble's observations are unraveling the mysteries of planet formation and providing a glimpse into the birthplaces of new solar systems.

For more information, visit https://nasa.gov/hubble.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Producer, Director & Editor: James Leigh

Director of Photography: James Ball

Executive Producers: James Leigh & Matthew Duncan

Production & Post: Origin Films

Video Credits:
Hubble Space Telescope Animation:
ESA/Hubble - M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen

Exoplanet Animations:
ESA/Hubble - M. Kornmesser & L. Calçada

Music Credits:
PREMIUM BEAT BY SHUTTERSTOCK
The Search by Northern Points

"Transcode" by Lee Groves [PRS], and Peter George Marett [PRS] via Universal Production Music

This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14731. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14731. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guide....
Transcript
0:07
What we're looking at here is one of the first images that Hubble took,
0:10
trying to answer the question of how common is planet formation?
0:13
Thirty objects in the Orion star forming region that has lots of stars in formation,
0:18
a young system.
0:19
Each one of these is an example of material around a young star
0:23
that looks to be forming a planetary system.
0:26
We know the material there is consistent with what planets
0:29
formed from in our solar system.
0:31
And now what we're seeing is evidence that there are disks of material
0:34
in this case, the disk is absorbing the light coming from behind.
0:38
It's a shadow, basically. There's another one.
0:41
In other cases, the light from the star itself is lighting up the disk.
0:44
So this is a really tantalizing image.
0:46
In the early days of Hubble, it was showing us
0:48
that when we really took a peering look at what we could do with Hubble
0:51
at protoplanetary systems, it started to see disks everywhere
0:55
that looked like they could be forming planetary systems.
1:00
One of the most exciting things about this composite image in my mind
1:03
is the diversity of young systems that are forming planets.
1:09
When Hubble launched, the only real observational database
1:13
we had to infer planet formation models was our own solar system.
1:17
We've got the four rocky planets, the interior, terrestrial planets,
1:21
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
1:24
And then you've got the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
1:28
And then you've got a whole bunch of comets, asteroids, smaller bodies.
1:32
So having all that stuff here in our solar system
1:35
allowed us to come up with planet formation models.
1:38
The only thing we could really test them on was our own solar system.
1:41
Now, let's fast forward to today.
1:42
We now know that there's a planet around every star in general, at least one.
1:47
We've discovered so many planets
1:49
we can use Hubble to look at their atmospheres,
1:52
which is something that was never, ever designed to do.
1:55
Look at an atmosphere of a planet outside of our solar system.
1:59
And look in detail at these disks to start to tease
2:03
out the fingerprints and atmospheres of planets around other stars.
2:07
It's kind of mind blowing.
2:09
And that's been a really exciting area of astrophysics since Hubble launched.
2:15
So the thing that's really cool about this image, it was sort of
2:17
like the beginning of putting the pieces together, observationally
2:21
of exoplanet science, planet formation around stars other than the sun.