Discovery of 80 stars with protoplanetary disks near the solar system

An international team of astronomers has discovered 80 newborn stars near the Sun in the constellations Chameleon, Orion and Taurus.

It is surrounded by protoplanetary disks, which are flat accumulations of gas and dust within which planets are supposed to form.

The press service of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) quoted scientist Christian Jinski, an employee at the National University of Galway, Ireland, as saying: “We have been able to move from studying individual newborn star systems to observing a large number of similar objects within several large regions where stars form.” "Some of the disks we discovered contain spiral arms and other structures that arose as a result of rotation and interactions."

Scientists made this discovery while studying three regions near Earth in which stars form and are located in the constellations Chameleon, Taurus, and Orion, 600-1,600 light-years from Earth. Hundreds of young stars are forming inside each one, including stars dozens of times more massive than the Sun, making them particularly interesting.

Astronomers studied these newborn stars using the VLT telescope installed at the Paranal Mountain Observatory in Chile, as well as using the SPHERE instrument connected to it. This allowed scientists to observe how protoplanetary disks surrounding young and emerging stars scatter and polarize their radiation, giving astronomers the ability to determine the size and structure of these clouds of gas and dust.

In total, astronomers were able to discover 80 stars that were surrounded by fairly large protoplanetary disks, some of which formed planets. Their analysis revealed several patterns linking the structure of stellar systems to the properties of the protoplanetary disks surrounding them. In particular, scientists found that protoplanetary disks are rare in binary and triple stars, which represent a large portion of newborn stars in all three regions studied.

In addition, scientists have discovered significant curvatures and areas of asymmetry in the structure of protoplanetary disks surrounding large young stars in the constellation Orion, suggesting the formation of particularly large planets within these accumulations of gas and dust. Astronomers hope that these objects will be studied for the first time using the E-ELT telescope under construction, which will have enough sensitivity and resolution to take pictures of them.