Press release
March 8, 2023
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered gaseous water in the planet-forming disk around the star V883 Orionis. This water has a chemical signature that explains its path from star-forming gas clouds to planets and supports the idea that water on Earth is even older than our sun.
“We can now trace the origin of water in our solar system back to before the formation of the sun.” says John J. Tobin, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the United States and lead author of the study published today in Nature.
The discovery was made by studying the composition of water in the planet-forming disk V883 Orionis, located about 1,300 light-years from Earth. When a cloud of gas and dust collapses, a star forms at its center. In addition, the material from the cloud creates a disk around the star. Over the course of a few million years, the material in the disk clumps together, forming comets, asteroids, and eventually planets. Tobin and his team took advantage of this ALMAin which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is participating, to measure the chemical signatures of water and its path from the star-forming cloud to the planets.
Water is normally made up of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. Tobin’s team looked at a slightly heavier version of water in which one of the hydrogen atoms was replaced with deuterium – a heavy atom isotope hydrogen – is replaced. Since simple water and heavy water form under different conditions, their ratio can be used to determine when and where water formed. For example, this ratio in some comets in the solar system has been shown to be similar to that of water on Earth, suggesting that comets may have brought water to Earth.
The journey of water from clouds to young stars and later from comets to planets has been observed before, but until now the connection between young stars and comets was missing.”V883 Orionis is the missing link in this casesaid Tobin.The composition of the water in the disk is very similar to that of comets in our own solar system. This supports the idea that water in planetary systems originated in interstellar space billions of years before the Sun and was adopted relatively unchanged by comets and Earth.“
But observing the water proved difficult.”Most of the water in the disks that form the planets is frozen as ice, so it is usually hidden from us.says co-author Margot Leemker, a PhD student at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. Gaseous water can be detected by the radiation emitted by the molecules as they rotate and oscillate, but with frozen water it is more complicated because the movement of the molecules is more hindered. Gaseous water is found close to the star, in the centre of the disks, where it is hotter. However, these nearby regions are obscured by the dust disk itself and are also too small to be detected by our telescopes.
Fortunately, in a recently conducted study demonstrated that the disk of V883 Orionis is unusually hot. A spectacular burst of energy from the star is heating the disk”at a temperature where the water is no longer in the form of ice but in the form of gas, so that it can be detectedsaid Tobin.
To do this, the team used ALMA, a network of radio telescopes located in northern Chile. Thanks to their sensitivity and ability to see small details, they were able to detect water and determine its composition as well as map its distribution within the disk. The observations revealed that this disk contains at least 1,200 times more water than all of Earth’s oceans.
In the future, they want what will happen Extremely large telescope ESO and its first generation instrument, METISuse. This mid-infrared instrument will be able to resolve the gaseous part of the water in these disks to better understand the path of water from star-forming clouds to the solar system.This will give us a much more complete picture of the ice and gas present in planet-forming disks.“, Leemker said in conclusion.
Further information
This research was presented in the paper “Deuterium-enriched water links planet-forming disks to comets and protostars,” published in Nature (doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05676-z).
The team consists of John J. Tobin (National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA), Merel L. R. van’t Hoff (Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, USA), Margot Leemker (Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, The Netherlands (Leiden)), Ewine F. van Dishoeck (Leiden), Teresa Paneque-Carreño (Leiden; European Southern Observatory, Germany), Kenji Furuya (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Japan), Daniel Harsono (Institute of Astronomy, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan), Magnus V. Persson (Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Onsala Space Observatory, Sweden), L. Ilsedore Cleeves (Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, USA), Patrick D. Sheehan (Center for Interdisciplinary Studies Exploration and Research in Astronomy, Northwestern University, United States) and Lucas Cieza (Núcleo de Astronomía, Facultad de Ingeniería, Millennium Nucleus on Young Exoplanets and Their Moons, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile).
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists from around the world to unlock the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories that astronomers use to answer exciting questions and inspire fascination with astronomy, and we promote international collaboration in astronomy. Founded in 1962 as an intergovernmental organisation, ESO is led by 16 Member States (Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, France, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and the United Kingdom) and the Host Country Chile and Australia as strategic partners. ESO Headquarters and its Visitor Centre and Planetarium, ESO Supernova, are located near Munich in Germany, while the Atacama Desert in Chile, a wonderland offering unique conditions for observing the skies, is home to our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its associated Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as two survey telescopes, the infrared VISTA and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. Also at Paranal, ESO will operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. In collaboration with international partners, ESO operates APEX and ALMA, two millimetre and submillimetre observing facilities on Chajnantor. On Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s largest eye in the sky”: ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile, we support our activities in the country and collaborate with Chilean partners and society.
The translations of ESO press releases into English are a service of the ESO Science Outreach Network (ESON), an international astronomy outreach network in which scientists and science communicators from all ESO Member Countries (and some other countries) are represented. It is the German node of the network. House of Astronomy in Heidelberg.
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Contact details
John J Tobin
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Charlottesville, United States
E-mail: jtobin@nrao.edu
Margot Leemker
Leiden Observatory
Leiden, Netherlands
E-mail: leemker@strw.leidenuniv.nl
Juan Carlos Muñoz Mateos
ESO Media Manager
Garching near Munich, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6176
E-mail: press@eso.org
Markus Nielbock (press contact Germany)
ESO Science Outreach Network and House of Astronomy
Heidelberg, Germany
Tel: +49 6221 528-134
E-mail: eson-germany@eso.org
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This is a translation of ESO press release eso2302.