A thousand light years from Earth something mega is happening.
The Hubble Space Telescope has capture photos of mega protoplanetary disk ever observed a swirling mass of gas and dust that spans almost 640 billion km.
To put that it is 40 times wider than our entire Solar System from the Sun to outer edge of the Kuiper Belt where comets drift in darkness.
For decades it was thought that protoplanetary disks are relatively calm orderly structure where planets gradually coalesce from dust and gas over millions of years.
Nasa Telescope
IRAS 23077+ 6707 shatters that photos.
Hubble observation announce a chaotic environment with bright finger like wisps of material shooting above and below disk central plane stretching much farther than anything seen in similar systems.
Even stranger these dramatic features appear only on one side of the disk.
The other side cuts off sharply with no visible filaments at all.
This asymmetry suggest something violent happened recently a sudden influx of gas and dust falling onto disk or interaction with surrounding environment that are reshaping its structure.
The disk obscures whatever star or stars lie at its centre.
Scientist believe it might harbour either a single massive hot star or binary pair.
With mass estimated at 10 to 30 times that of Jupiter there is more than enough material here to build multiple gas giant planets making it scaled up version of what our own Solar System might have looked like 4.6 billion years ago.
Hubble visible light imaging provides exceptional detail complements observation from NASA James Webb Space Telescope which sees in infrared.
James Web Telescope
These observations are revealing that planet formation can be far more turbulent and dynamic than pas thought.
This discovery transform IRAS 23077+ 6707 into unique laboratory for studying how planets from under extreme conditions.
Protoplanetary disk HL Taurus
Astronomers have more questions than answers about what driving the chaos in distant stellar nursery.
Source universetoday.com
