The SEEDS Project, an international team of astronomers lead by National Astronomical Observatoru of Japan and other universities succesfully obtained the direct and sharp images of the protoplanetary disks around young stars, including AB Aur, that reveal how planets may have formed within them by using Subaru 8.2m telescope and the newly developed instuments, HiCIAO amd AO188. No other telescopes, whether ground-based or in space, have ever penetrated so close to a central star, showing the details of its disk.

 False-color images of AB-Auriga taken by the Subaru Telescope and observational equipment AO188 and HiCIAO. A star in the center is hidden by coronagraph. The lower photo shows the enlarged image of structures in the center of the upper photo. An astronomical unit is equal to the average distance between the Sun and the Earth.

 

 

More information (Japanese)  

 

[Contact]

Professor Tooru Yamada

Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University

E-mail: yamada*astr.tohoku.ac.jp (Replace * with @)