HD100546 and Circumstellar Disk with Extrasolar Planet
In a recently published paper, NOAO astronomer Joan Najita was part of a team that has shown evidence for a planet forming in the disk around a young star. The results provide perhaps the first evidence that planets are surrounded by a circumplanetary disk at birth. This figure is an artist’s conception of the young massive star HD100546 and its surrounding disk. A planet forming in the disk has cleared the disk within 13 AU of the star, a distance comparable to that of Saturn from the sun. As gas and dust flows from the circumstellar disk to the planet, this material surrounds the planet as a circumplanetary disk (inset). These rotating disks are believed to be the birthplaces of planetary moons, such as the Galilean moons that orbit Jupiter.
Credit:NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld
About the Image
Id: | noaoann14007a |
Type: | Collage |
Release date: | Sept. 9, 2014 |
Related announcements: | noaoann14007 |
Size: | 1825 x 1000 px |
About the Object
Category: | Stars |