They look like a strange collection of objects, from an eagle spreading its wings to a spinning top and a Japanese throwing weapon ‘shuriken’.
But these stunning new images released today show “planet-forming disks”: swirling rings of gas and dust surrounding young stars in the Milky Way.
Their location several hundred light-years away from us (or billions and billions of kilometers away) makes them appear like tiny pinpricks in the night sky.
So scientists used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the powerful European Southern Observatory in Chile to show more than 80 of them in greater detail than ever before.
Many look like perfect circles or “bowls” with bright light toward the center, while others look like asymmetrical blobs with no uniformity.
From wing-like spirals to jagged spirals, new images show the incredible variety of planet-forming disks that surround stars.
The stunning images, captured with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, represent one of the largest studies ever carried out on planet-forming disks.
In total, scientists have published images of 86 young stars with planet-forming disks around them (all in our Milky Way galaxy) in three Astronomy & Astrophysics articles.
“This study is the largest of its kind so far and used the most advanced telescopes and instrumentation to allow us to reach planetary nurseries,” said Dr. Christian Ginski, one of the authors and an astronomer at the University of Galway, Ireland. . Online mail.
The images reveal the “extraordinary diversity” of planet-forming disks, but Dr. Ginski and his colleagues still don’t know exactly why.
“Although we still don’t know for sure why the discs appear so diverse, it is quite surprising to see this diversity,” he told MailOnline.
The researchers used the VLT to study 86 young stars in three different star-forming regions of our galaxy: Taurus, Chameleon I and Orion.
Taurus and Chameleon I are both about 600 light-years from Earth, while Orion, a gas-rich cloud about 1,600 light-years from us, is known to be the birthplace of several stars more massive than the Sun.
One of them, called T Tau in the Taurus region, looks like a small newt, while V1012 in Orion looks like an eagle spreading its wings.
Many are noticeably circular, with a prominent white color in the center and violet further outwards.
The colors in the images are a visual aid to represent different brightness levels, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) told MailOnline.
Purple corresponds to the faint outskirts of these disks, while orange and white show the brighter regions toward the center, closer to the host star.
Planet-forming disks in the Taurus cloud. This cloud hosts a stellar nursery containing hundreds of newly formed stars.
Researchers used the VLT to study a total of 86 stars in three different star-forming regions of our galaxy: Taurus, Chameleon I and Orion. Pictured are the planet-forming disks on Chamaeleon I.
“But the underlying data in each image was captured through a single ‘color’, so to speak,” an ESO spokesperson said.
“These images were taken in infrared light and show starlight scattered by dust particles in the disks surrounding these stars.
«In these images we do not see the stars themselves, because during the observations they were blocked with a special mask, similar to the creation of an artificial eclipse.
“This reveals the disks, which would otherwise be drowned out by the intense glare of the stars.”
The team was able to obtain fascinating information from the telescope’s data about the star systems themselves.
For example, in Orion they discovered that stars in ‘binary’ star systems (which have two or more stars gravitationally bound and orbiting each other) are less likely to have large planet-forming disks.
This is a significant result given that, unlike our Sun, which is the only star in our solar system, most stars in our galaxy have solar companions.
Additionally, the uneven appearance of the disks in this region suggests the possibility that there are massive planets embedded within them, which could be causing the disks to warp and misalign.
In the image, planet formation disks in Orion. Orion, a gas-rich cloud about 1,600 light years from us, is known to be the birthplace of several stars more massive than the sun.
This composite image shows the planet-forming disk MWC 758, located about 500 light-years away in the Taurus region.
Pictured are instruments that make up the Very Large Telescope in the remote and sparsely populated Atacama Desert in northern Chile.
Dr. Ginski noted that a minority of these planet-forming disks may not end up forming any planets, despite the name.
“It is not entirely clear whether each disk will form a planet,” he told MailOnline.
‘Some disks may not be massive enough or disperse quickly enough to allow planets to form.
“But in fact, from the thousands of planets we have discovered, it would seem that planet formation is a very common process around young stars.
“Therefore, it is very likely that most of these disks have planets embedded in them.”
The three newly published articles, each corresponding to a region of the Milky Way, can be accessed here: Taurus, chameleon i and Orion.