The SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has taken the most detailed image so far of the 5-million-year-old protoplanetary system SU Aur.
This image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the protoplanetary disk around SU Aur. Image credit: ESO / Ginski et al.
SU Aur is located approximately 517 light-years away in the constellation of Auriga.
Also known as HD 282624, HIC 22925 and BD+30 743, this star is a member of the Taurus- Auriga star-forming region.
SU Aur is much younger and more massive than the Sun and is known to have a giant circumstellar protoplanetary disk.
The new image from the SPHERE instrument on VLT shows the disk in unprecedented detail, including the long dust trails connected to it.
“SU Aur itself is obscured by the instrument’s coronagraph, a device that blocks the light from the central star to allow the less bright features around it to stand out,” ESO astronomers said.
“The dust trails are composed of material from an encompassing nebula flowing into the disk.”
“This nebula is likely the outcome of a collision between the star and a huge cloud of gas and dust, resulting in the unique shape of this planet-forming disk and the surrounding dust structure.”
The astronomers found that the nebula is still feeding material to SU Aur’s planet-forming disk.
“Our observations suggest that SU Aur is undergoing late infall of material, which can explain the observed disk structures,” they said.
“SU Aur is the clearest observational example of this mechanism at work and demonstrates that late accretion events can still occur in the class II phase, thereby significantly affecting the evolution of circumstellar disks.”
“Constraining the frequency of such events with additional observations will help determine whether this process is responsible for the spin-orbit misalignment in evolved exoplanet systems.”
The findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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Christian Ginski et al. 2021. Disk Evolution Study Through Imaging of Nearby Young Stars (DESTINYS): Late Infall Causing Disk Misalignment and Dynamic Structures in SU Aur. ApJL 908, L25; doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/abdf57
