This illustration shows an artist’s impression of the brown
dwarf 2MASSW J1207334-393254, or 2M1207 for short. With a mass
that amounts to 25 times that of Jupiter, 2M1207 is surrounded
by a circumstellar disc of gas and dust and possesses a
planetary companion five times more massive than Jupiter. The
planetary companion lies at a very large distance from 2M1207 –
the projected distance between the two bodies measuring 55
astronomical units (AU). Sub-millimeter observations performed
with the SPIRE instrument on board ESA’s Herschel Space
Observatory have shown that the disc’s total mass amounts to
about three to five times the mass of Jupiter and that its
radius ranges between 50 and 100 AU. With such a massive disc,
it is likely that the planetary-mass companion originated
directly from disc fragmentation, thus challenging the standard
scenario of giant planet formation via core accretion.