GROWING UP IN Lutheran Sweden, Karin Öberg had no inkling that she would one day become an astrochemist, the first to observe a complex organic molecule in the freezing cloud of gas and dust surrounding a young star—or that she would convert to Catholicism.

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2023/01/jhj-portrait-karen-oberg

Astronomers may have found a gaseous disk around a planet orbiting the young star AS 209. This is one of just four circumplanetary disk candidates discovered so far, and these observations enable the first mass estimate of a circumplanetary disk’s gas.

https://aasnova.org/2022/08/10/a-circumplanetary-disk-candidate-spotted-with-alma/

The dust and gas where planets form have been mapped in extraordinary detail around five nearby young stars—and astronomers have found organic molecules that are implicated in the emergence of life on Earth.

The findings suggest that the basic chemical conditions that resulted in life on Earth could exist more widely across the Milky Way, according to Dr John Ilee, Research Fellow at the University of Leeds who lead a project called Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales (MAPS).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2021/09/16/conditions-that-...

Cambridge, MA -- Astronomers have mapped out the chemicals inside of planetary nurseries in extraordinary detail. The newly unveiled maps reveal the locations of dozens of molecules within five protoplanetary disks — regions of dust and gas where planets form around young stars.

"These planet-forming disks are teeming with organic molecules, some which are implicated in the origins of life here on Earth," explains Karin Öberg, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics |...