Newborn Star Surrounded By Planet-Forming Disks at Different Angles -by spacewriter
These images, taken a year apart by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, reveal a shadow moving counterclockwise around a gas and dust disc encircling the young newborn star TW Hydrae. The shadow may be caused by the gravitational effect of an unseen planet orbiting close to the star. The planet pulls up material from the main disc, creating a warped inner disc. The twisted disc blocks light from the star and casts a shadow onto the disc’s outer region.
The explanation invokes two misaligned disks that are each casting shadows. The first observation missed them because the pair are pretty close together. However, in the years between observations, they’ve now separated and split into two shadows. Apparently, the two misaligned disks are that way thanks to the gravitational pull of two planets in slightly different orbital planes. “We’ve never really seen this before on a protoplanetary disk.
The suspected planets are located in a region roughly the distance of Jupiter from our Sun. And, the shadows complete one rotation around the star about every 15 years. That’s about equal to the orbital period for a planet at that distance. ALMA’s image of the planetary disk around the newborn star TW Hydrae. It reveals the classic rings and gaps that signify planets are in formation in this system.
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