Giant Telescope Spies Planet Formation
02 September 2014

 

This is an artist impression showing the disks of material, surrounding the two stars of the HK Tauri system. This disks are believed to be evolving planetary systems.
Credit: R. Hurt (NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC)

Astronomers, observing with the giant ALMA telescope in Chile, which observes the radio waves coming from the universe, have found planet-forming gas discs (protoplanetary discs) around the two young stars in a double star system, HK Tauri, consisting of two stars in orbit around each other.

These new ALMA observations provide the best picture ever of planet forming discs in a double star. The new result also allows to explain why so many exoplanets, unlike the planets in our solar system, have strange, eccentric or inclined orbits.
Unlike our solitary Sun, many stars are members of double or multiple star systems. While binary stars are very common, it is not well understood how and where planets are born in such complex environments.

The HK Tauri stars, located about 450 light-years away from Earth in the zodiacal constellation Taurus, The Bull, are very young, by the standards of stellar ages. They are estimated to be less than five million years old. (For comparison, the Sun is estimated to be nearly five billion years old.) They are separated by a distance of about 58 billion km, or nine times the average distance between the Sun and Pluto.

The ALMA observatory is a giant radio interferometer, consisting of 66 linked radio dishes, ranging in diameter from 7 m to 12 m, which detect the radio waves from the celestial bodies, and can act together like a single giant telescope. ALMA is expected to provide detailed observations of the processes of star and planet formation. It is located atop the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Atacama Desert, at an altitude of 5,000 m. 

References
ESO Website
Wikipedia

Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Astronomy Specialist
 
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