Building Worlds with Luke Skywatcher

How do planetary systems form? If you wanted to observe them, where would you look and what would you look for?

To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Luke Keller, professor of Astronomy and Physics at Ithaca College, who together with his team has identified 9 of these early solar systems.

As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing: a recently published paper that determined that at any given time, it is likely that a couple of extrasolar objects like 3I/ATLAS and Oumuamua would be present in our solar system. The real issue is detecting them.

For context, Luke, whose science has focused over the years on finding debris from solar systems, explains how protoplanetary discs can eject matter that ends up orbiting that star. He’s especially fond of cosmic dust, “the catalyst for the formation of planets and asteroids and comets…”

Then it’s time for a question for Luke from the audience, from Elisa: “I heard that the James Webb Space Telescope sees infrared light. How does that work? Does that mean it couldn't see the Sun?”

Luke breaks down the various wavelengths of light and our Sun. He also explains how the JWST works and why it never looks at the sun.

It turns out that Luke has built a variety of astronomical instruments including imaging and spectroscopic tools with for large observatories. He’s also used information from instruments like JWST in his studies of the formation of stars and solar systems.

Luke explains how his teams search for preplanetary solar systems, what they’re looking for, and where they’re currently looking: associations of stars in the direction of the constellations Taurus, Scorpius and Chamaeleon. All told so far Luke and his team have identified 9 of these early solar systems. He then breaks down the current thinking on how planetary systems form from clouds of dust. He explains some of the processes that involves, along with the types of planets that may form.

For our next audience question, Joan asks, “What do you think is the most interesting constellation?” Luke picks two: first, Ursa Major, aka “The Big Dipper,” because he grew up in Alaska and saw it all the time – along with “auroras all the time.” The second constellation he picks is Orion, aka “The Hunter,” because it contains some of the closest star forming regions of our galaxy.

Luke unpacks the difference between “watching the sky” and “observing the sky” – and why he encourages the latter to both his students and the general public. And before the episode is over, we get to hear about Luke’s live show, Spacetime, where he collaborates with poet David Gonzalez and guitarist Álvaro Domene in a stage performance that’s equal parts astrophysics, poetry, and music.

If you’d like to know more about Luke’s show, Spacetime, check it out at https://spacetimeshow.org/.

We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please support us on Patreon.

Credits for Images Used in this Episode:

• Image of a young sun-like star encircled by its planet-forming disk of gas and dust. – Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech edited by Invader Xan.
• Artist's impression of the interstellar interloper 1I/ʻOumuamua making a visit to our solar system. – Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted and F. Summers (STScI).
• Spectral distribution of sunlight. – Credit: Creative Commons / Rhwentworth.
• The Taurus-Auriga association, also known as the Taurus-Auriga molecular clouds, is a stellar association located around 140 parsecs (420 ly) from Earth in the constellation of Taurus. It is the nearest large star formation region to Earth. – Credit: ESA/Herschel/NASA/JPL-Caltech; acknowledgement: R. Hurt (JPL-Caltech)
• The constellation Taurus as seen by the naked eye. The constellation lines have been added for clarity. – Credit: Creative Commons/ Till Credner - Own work, A Visual Guide to the Constellations.
• Artist’s impression of a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk in which planets are forming. – Credit: European Southern Observatory.
• Illustration comparing the sizes of various exoplanets with Earth, Mercury and the Moon. – Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
• The constellation Ursa Major as it can be seen by the unaided eye.– Credit: Creative Commons / Till Credner - Own work: AlltheSky.com.
• Composite image comparing infrared and visible views of the famous Orion nebula and its surrounding cloud, an industrious star-making region located near the hunter constellation's sword. The picture at left was taken with the Infrared Array Camera on board NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and the picture at right is from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, headquartered in Tucson, Ariz. – Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Toledo/NOAO.
• Image showing Betelgeuse (top left) and the dense nebulae of the Orion molecular cloud complex. – Credit: Creative Commons / Rogelio Bernal Andreo