430 Light Years Out, In Taurus -- An "Infant" Planet, Still Glows Around A Warped Disk...

Now, just one more celestial beauty, to close out our Friday evening festivities!

This truly is. . . an unprecedented era, of discoveries. Here's the latest on it all, from NASA:

. . .The massive planet, likely still glowing from the heat of its formation, lies in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, an active stellar nursery with hundreds of newborn stars some 430 light-years away. The cloud’s relative closeness makes it a prime target for astronomers. But while the cloud offers deep insight into the formation and evolution of young stars, their planets are usually a closed book to telescopes like TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. These telescopes rely on the “transit method,” watching for the slight dip in starlight when a planet crosses the face of its host star. But such planetary systems must be edge-on, from Earth’s vantage point, for the transit method to work. Very young star systems are surrounded by disks of debris, however, blocking our view of any potentially transiting planets.

A research team has just reported an extraordinary stroke of luck. Somehow, the outer debris disk surrounding this newborn planet, IRAS 04125+2902 b, has been sharply warped, exposing the baby world to extensive transit observations by TESS. . . .

Now you know -- and now the sheets are chanting my name, sweet and low, but chanting just the same… Sleep well -- one and all of good will!

नमस्ते