Direct Imaging Discovery Of A Young Giant Planet Orbiting On Solar System Scales
HD 135344 AB is a young visual binary system that is best known for the protoplanetary disk around the secondary star. The circumstellar environment of the A0-type primary star, on the other hand, is already depleted.
HD 135344 A is therefore an ideal target for the exploration of recently formed giant planets because it is not obscured by dust. We searched for and characterized substellar companions to HD 135344 A down to separations of about 10 au. We observed HD 135344 A with VLT/SPHERE in the H23 and K12 bands and obtained YJ and YJH spectroscopy. In addition, we carried out VLTI/GRAVITY observations for the further astrometric and spectroscopic confirmation of a detected companion.
We discovered a close-in young giant planet, HD 135344 Ab, with a mass of about 10 MJ. The multi-epoch astrometry confirms the bound nature based on common parallax and common proper motion. This firmly rules out the scenario of a non-stationary background star. The semi-major axis of the planetary orbit is approximately 15-20 au, and the photometry is consistent with that of a mid L-type object.
The inferred atmospheric and bulk parameters further confirm the young and planetary nature of the companion. HD 135344 Ab is one of the youngest directly imaged planets that has fully formed and orbits on Solar System scales. It is a valuable target for studying the early evolution and atmosphere of a giant planet that could have formed in the vicinity of the snowline.
Detections of HD 135344 Ab with VLT/SPHERE. For IRDIS, the images show the residuals from the PSF subtraction for one of the dual-band filters. For IFS, the images show the detection maps for one of the wavelength channels. The planet is seen in westward direction (i.e., toward the right). The color scale is linear and normalized to the brightest pixel in each image. The dotted circles indicate the separation from the central star in integer multiples of λ/D. The night of the observation is given in each panel. — astro-ph.EP
T. Stolker, M. Samland, L. B. F. M. Waters, M. E. van den Ancker, W. O. Balmer, S. Lacour, M. L. Sitko, J. J. Wang, M. Nowak, A.-L. Maire, J. Kammerer, G. P. P. L. Otten, R. Abuter, A. Amorim, M. Benisty, J.-P. Berger, H. Beust, S. Blunt, A. Boccaletti, M. Bonnefoy, H. Bonnet, M. S. Bordoni, G. Bourdarot, W. Brandner, F. Cantalloube, P. Caselli, B. Charnay, G. Chauvin, A. Chavez, A. Chomez, E. Choquet, V. Christiaens, Y. Clénet, V. Coudé du Foresto, A. Cridland, R. Davies, R. Dembet, J. Dexter, C. Dominik, A. Drescher, G. Duvert, A. Eckart, F. Eisenhauer, N. M. Förster Schreiber, P. Garcia, R. Garcia Lopez, T. Gardner, E. Gendron, R. Genzel, S. Gillessen, J. H. Girard, S. Grant, X. Haubois, G. Heißel, Th. Henning, S. Hinkley, S. Hippler, M. Houllé, Z. Hubert, L. Jocou, M. Keppler, P. Kervella, L. Kreidberg, N. T. Kurtovic, A.-M. Lagrange, V. Lapeyrère, J.-B. Le Bouquin, D. Lutz, F. Mang, G.-D. Marleau, A. Mérand, M. Min, P. Mollière, J. D. Monnier, C. Mordasini, D. Mouillet, E. Nasedkin, T. Ott, C. Paladini, T. Paumard, K. Perraut, G. Perrin, O. Pfuhl, N. Pourré, L. Pueyo, S. P. Quanz, D. C. Ribeiro, E. Rickman, Z. Rustamkulov, J. Shangguan, T. Shimizu, D. Sing, J. Stadler, O. Straub, C. Straubmeier, E. Sturm, L. J. Tacconi, E. F. van Dishoeck, A. Vigan, F. Vincent et al. (5 additional authors not shown)
Comments: 13 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in A&A
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2507.06206 [astro-ph.EP](or arXiv:2507.06206v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.06206
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Submission history
From: Tomas Stolker
[v1] Tue, 8 Jul 2025 17:30:59 UTC (1,340 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06206
Astrobiology
