A circumplanetary disk is a torus, pancake or ring-shaped accumulation of mattercomposed ofgas, dust, planetesimals, asteroids or collision fragments in orbit around a planet. Around the planets, they are the reservoirs of material out of which moons may form. Such a disk can manifest itself in various ways. In August 2018 astronomers reported the probable detection of a circumplanetary disk around CS Cha B. The authors state that “The CS Cha system is the only system in which a circumplanetary disc is likely present as well as a resolved circumstellar disc.” In 2020 though, the parameters of CS Cha B were revised, making it an accreting red dwarf star, and making disk a circumsterllar. In June 2019 astronomers reported the detection of evidence of a circumplanetary disk around PDS 70b using spectroscopy and accretion signatures. The latter were also detected for other planetary candidates before. In July2019 astronomers reported the first-ever detection using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of a circumplanetary disk. ALMA studies, using millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths, are better at observing dust concentrated in interplanetary regions, since stars emit comparatively little light at these wavelengths, and since optical observations are often fraught with overwhelming glare from the bright host star. The circumplanetary disk was detected around a young massive, Jupiter-like exoplanet, PDS 70c; another such disk may have been detected around the related massive, Jupiter-like exoplanet, PDS 70b, as well. These exoplanets are part of the multiplanetary PDS 70star system, about from Earth. According to Andrea Isella, lead researcher from the Rice University in Houston, Texas, “For the first time, we can conclusively see the tell-tale signs of a circumplanetary disk, which helps to support many of the current theories of planet formation... By comparing our observations to the high-resolution infrared and optical images, we can clearly see that an otherwise enigmatic concentration of tiny dust particles is actually a planet-girding disk of dust, the first such feature ever conclusively observed.”
