{"id":577097,"date":"2026-07-09T15:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T15:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/577097\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T15:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T15:48:13","slug":"astronomers-probe-chemistry-of-giant-exoplanet-beta-pictoris-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/577097\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers Probe Chemistry of Giant Exoplanet Beta Pictoris b"},"content":{"rendered":"

Using the upgraded GRAVITY+ instrument on ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), astronomers have measured the ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere of the young exoplanet Beta Pictoris b, offering new insights into how giant planets form.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

This artist\u2019s impression shows how the gas giant exoplanet inside the disc of Beta Pictoris may look. Image credit: L. Cal\u00e7ada \/ ESO.<\/p>\n

Frist discovered in November 2008 by astronomers using ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope, Beta Pictoris b<\/a> is a gas giant similar to Jupiter but is 9 to 13 times more massive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The exoplanet orbits its host star, Beta Pictoris, at a distance of 8 times the Earth-Sun distance.<\/p>\n

The star also hosts at least two more planets and a circumstellar disk of gas and dust that could, in time, evolve into a torus of icy bodies much like Solar System\u2019s Kuiper Belt.<\/p>\n

In a new study, Max-Planck-Institut f\u00fcr Astronomie Ph.D. student Antonia von Stauffenberg and colleagues aimed to investigate Beta Pictoris b\u2019s origin and potential atmospheric variability.<\/p>\n

They observed the planet with the recently upgraded GRAVITY+ instrument.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe applied a method proposed a few years ago to identify a planet\u2019s birthplace inside its planet-forming disk,\u201d they explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy measuring the relative abundance ratio between two different versions of carbon (C) locked inside carbon monoxide (CO) gas in Beta Pictoris b\u2019s atmosphere, it should be possible to infer whether the planet formed outside or inside a region in the disk where carbon monoxide was present as ice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cConsidering the irradiation by the host star heating the disk from its center, this would directly translate to the distance from the star at which the planet formed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe radius at which the temperature is low enough to turn gas into ice is commonly referred to as the snowline.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIsotopes exhibit the same number of positively charged protons in the nucleus of an atom, but differ in the number of neutral neutrons, like in the two carbon isotopes: carbon-12 (12C) and carbon-13 (13C).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a consequence, they have slightly different masses but exhibit similar chemical properties.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn space, carbon is often found in association with oxygen, forming 12CO and 13CO molecules.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInterestingly, in an earlier attempt to assess the diagnostic ratio between 12CO and the somewhat heavier 13CO, our colleagues utilized the original GRAVITY instrument before its upgrade, yielding a comparatively low ratio.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe already suspected that GRAVITY may have been inadequate to properly resolve the key signals in this dataset and advised caution in interpreting the results.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStill, following the rationale of the scenario mentioned above, this face value suggests that Beta Pictoris b might have grown in the outer disk beyond the snowline by accumulating CO ice rather than CO gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, at a range of about 10 AU from the host star, Beta Pictoris b currently circles the disk clearly between the star and the snowline, where CO should have been present predominantly as a gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAssuming the result was correct, this finding would indicate Beta Pictoris b may have migrated through the disk.\u201d<\/p>\n

The astronomers also found subtle hints that the observed levels of flux coming from the planet vary over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite its low significance, the dominating variations seem to be linked to the planet\u2019s rotation period of approximately 8.7 hours,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf true, this may hint at clouds or chemical processes in Beta Pictoris b\u2019s atmosphere. However, more sensitive observations are required to confirm the result.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the proposed scheme to recover a gas giant\u2019s birthplace, the new, more precise 12CO\/13CO abundance ratio clearly shifts Beta Pictoris b into the warmer, inner range of the natal planet-forming disk, consistent with the planet\u2019s current location.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn addition, the ratio broadly matches values commonly found in the Solar System and the interstellar medium, which pervades the space between the stars in the Milky Way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overwhelming majority of about a dozen young giant gas planets probed for the CO ratio show similar values.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis consistency may actually be bad news, because the carbon isotope abundance ratio doesn\u2019t seem to be that diagnostic after all, when used as a probe to identify a planet\u2019s distance from its host star.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most likely explanation is that any potential variance during planet formation is too small to be caught by the proposed method.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means that the 12CO\/13CO ratio currently fails to be sufficiently decisive to tell us anything specific about individual planet-forming environments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTherefore, it is very likely we are missing some crucial physics that govern CO ice chemistry in planet-forming disks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThus, the 12CO\/13CO ratio may not tell us much about the differences between the milder gaseous environments and the cold, CO-ice-laden realm after all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor now, it seems the wide-orbit giant gas planets refuse to reveal their origins.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNew tools that can distinguish between planet formation scenarios are needed, and GRAVITY+ may play a vital role in finding and evaluating them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The findings<\/a> were published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

A. von Stauffenberg et al. 2026. 13CO and potential variability in \u03b2 Pictoris b with GRAVITY+. A&A 711, L2; doi: 10.1051\/0004-6361\/202660275<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Using the upgraded GRAVITY+ instrument on ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), astronomers have measured the ratio of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[10210,245758,245759,882,19448,235348,235349,18,22912,18060,10211,19,17,28709,133,63184],"class_list":["post-577097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-atmosphere","tag-beta-pictoris","tag-beta-pictoris-b","tag-carbon","tag-carbon-monoxide","tag-carbon-12","tag-carbon-13","tag-eire","tag-eso","tag-exoplanet","tag-gas-giant","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-planet-formation","tag-science","tag-vlti"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}