ESO: SPHERE Reveals Zoo of Disks Around Young Stars

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ESO: SPHERE Reveals Zoo of Disks Around Young Stars

Post by bystander » Wed Apr 11, 2018 4:09 pm

SPHERE Reveals Fascinating Zoo of Disks Around Young Stars
ESO Photo Release | VLT | SPHERE | 2018 Apr 11
New images from the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope are revealing the dusty discs surrounding nearby young stars in greater detail than previously achieved. They show a bizarre variety of shapes, sizes and structures, including the likely effects of planets still in the process of forming.

The SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile allows astronomers to suppress the brilliant light of nearby stars in order to obtain a better view of the regions surrounding them. This collection of new SPHERE images is just a sample of the wide variety of dusty discs being found around young stars.

These discs are wildly different in size and shape — some contain bright rings, some dark rings, and some even resemble hamburgers. They also differ dramatically in appearance depending on their orientation in the sky — from circular face-on discs to narrow discs seen almost edge-on.

SPHERE’s primary task is to discover and study giant exoplanets orbiting nearby stars using direct imaging. But the instrument is also one of the best tools in existence to obtain images of the discs around young stars — regions where planets may be forming. Studying such discs is critical to investigating the link between disc properties and the formation and presence of planets. ...

Disks ARound TTauri Stars with Sphere (DARTTS-S)
I: Sphere / IRDIS Polarimetric Imaging of 8 prominent TTauri Disks
- Henning Avenhaus et al New disk discovered with VLT/SPHERE around the M star GSC 07396-00759 - E. Sissa et al
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