The observatory caught the signal of 97 newly born “solar systems” – Information Technology

VLA and ALMA, humanity’s two “heavy” radio astronomical observatories, have collected spectacular data sets of 97 fledgling stars bearing protoplanetary disks – similar “solar systems”. hybrid – in the constellation Orion.

The team of scientists led by Dr. Patrick Sheehan from Northwestern University and the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory used two systems of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA, located in New York) observatory. Mexico) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA, located in Chile’s Atacama Desert) to peer directly into one of the universe’s most fertile “stellar nurseries”.

According to Sci-News, it is the Orion Molecular Cloud, 1,400 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Orion.

Young stellar systems with protoplanetary disks that are round and distorted are detected in radio light by ALMA (blue) and VLA (orange) – Photo: NRAO / AUI / NSF

The structure of this dense molecular cloud of gas and dust helped form large disks as the material in the cloud collapsed, rather than directly onto the forming star at the center of the disk.

This disk will gradually accrete the star over time and may itself become a protoplanetary disk in the future and help the star become not alone, but at the center of a new “solar system”. . A total of 97 newborn “solar systems” were captured by the VLA and ALMA.

This discovery is part of the VANDAM survey, which seeks and studies young stars.

Some of the stars of the 97 newly identified objects may be surprisingly maturing: astronomers have observed gaps in protoplanetary disks that are just 100,000 years old. It usually takes worlds like our own solar system up to 1 million years for the protoplanetary disk to look neat and empty – the beginning of the planet’s appearance.

Some of the objects are so irregular in shape that scientists believe that because they’re new to the planet, the protoplanetary disk system hasn’t fully formed yet.

The findings have just been published in the Astrophysical Journal.