ESO Photo Release | ALMA | 2019 Oct 04
Twin baby stars grow amongst a twisting network of gas and dust
Astronomers using ALMA have obtained an extremely high-resolution image showing two disks in which young stars are growing, fed by a complex pretzel-shaped network of filaments of gas and dust. Observing this remarkable phenomenon sheds new light on the earliest phases of the lives of stars and helps astronomers determine the conditions in which binary stars are born.
The two baby stars were found in the [BHB2007] 11 system – the youngest member of a small stellar cluster in the Barnard 59 dark nebula, which is part of the clouds of interstellar dust called the Pipe nebula. Previous observations of this binary system showed the outer structure. Now, thanks to the high resolution of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and an international team of astronomers led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Germany, we can see the inner structure of this object. ...
The two circumstellar disks are surrounded by a bigger disk with a total mass of about 80 Jupiter masses, which displays a complex network of dust structures distributed in spiral shapes – the pretzel loops. ... The baby stars accrete mass from the bigger disk in two stages. The first stage is when mass is transferred to the individual circumstellar disks in beautiful twirling loops, which is what the new ALMA image showed. The data analysis also revealed that the less-massive but brighter circumstellar disk — the one in the lower part of the image — accretes more material. In the second stage, the stars accrete mass from their circumstellar disks. ...
Twin Baby Stars Grow from Gas Streamers Out of a Common Disk
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) | 2019 Oct 04
Gas Flow and Accretion via Spiral Streamers and Circumstellar Disks in a Young Binary Protostar ~ F. O. Alves et al
- Science 366(6461):90 (04 Oct 2019) DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw3491 (pdf)