#t tauri

Taurus Molecular Cloud

Just north of the bright star Aldebaran is a famous star called T Tauri, and NGC 1555 a dusty nebula that forms part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud.

T Tauri is a classic example of a young proto star a few million years old, that osculates in brightness (variable) in a particular way, typical of stars similar to our Sun, but before they enter the main sequence. The brightness comes from the fact the star goes through phases of fusion and non-fusion based on gravitational activity.

To the bottom left of the image is a Herbig Haro object, a forming star prior to the T Tauri state, as dust and gas is pulled towards the centre and a large amount expelled in vast energetic jets.

In the above close-up, you can see some of the red/orange coloured jet poking out the top right of the image. These jets are normally aligned along the polar regions of the forming object.

This celestial lightsaber does not lie in a galaxy far, far away, but rather inside our home galaxy, the Milky Way. It's inside a turbulent birthing ground for new stars known as the Orion B molecular cloud complex, located 1,350 light-years away. 

In the center of the image, partially obscured by a dark, Jedi-like cloak of dust, a newborn star shoots twin jets out into space as a sort of birth announcement to the universe

Evidence of Co-Orbital Planets ?

First there was Hubble, then JWST. The End. ?

Well, clearly not ! Astronomers all around the world have been using many different types of both ground and space based telescopes, not regularly featured in the media, but just as revolutionary to Astronomy.

One such telescope has been ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. One of it's functions has been to target stars to such an extent, it could see the dust and gas swirling around them, and the animated gif above, is a collection of many of it's findings.

Astronomers believe the dark areas could possibly represent planets forming and removing the dust/gas material as they do, although it could also be the boundary where different kinds of elements can remain stable, although it's quite possible both are at play to some extent.

A recent image of PDS70, a very young T Tauri type star some 370 light years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus appears to show two objects within the dark area, and sharing the same orbit around the star.

Could this be evidence of planets co-orbiting a star ? This is not evidence of it, but maybe at least a candidate for study.

If it turns out to be that, then it opens up a whole new area of interest in how such situations can evolve and where it may lead.

Particularly interesting as the most popular theory to the moon, is that our planet collided with another early in it's history.

Source:

T Tauri and Hind's Variable Nebula

Nebula generally reflect or glow based on bombardment of dust and gas by close-by stars, so it stands to reason that if the main star that's being reflected on the nebula is a variable star, so will the nebula also fluctuate in apparent brightness from Earth.

T Tauri is a star that's 650 light years from Earth, and is the archetypal T Tauri Variable type star, a star that changes brightness in a predictable pattern, but often for different reasons.

It turns out that this star is a sun-like star but very young, only a few million years of age, and pre main sequence, so the core is still not yet fully formed and fusing, as a result, gravity will push down on the star, igniting fusion briefly, but then expand out again and reduce the core pressure and stop the fusion, so the star is bouncing backwards and forwards in a predictable state, and this is what is causing the brightness of the star to increase and reduce over a set time period.

Mysterieuze spiraalstructuren ontdekt rondom de ster/’planetenfabriek’ RU Lupi

De spiraalstructuur rondom RU Lupi. Inzet: de eerder ontdekte stofschijf met concentrische ringen en gaten. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), J. Huang and S. Andrews; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello

Sterrenkundigen hebben rondom de jonge, veranderlijke ster RU Lupi, gelegen op een afstand van 400 lichtjaren in het sterrenbeeld Wolf (Lupus), een enorme spiraalstructuur van gas ontdekt. De spiraalarmen…

Mysterieuze spiraalstructuren ontdekt rondom de ster/’planetenfabriek’ RU Lupi

De spiraalstructuur rondom RU Lupi. Inzet: de eerder ontdekte stofschijf met concentrische ringen en gaten. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), J. Huang and S. Andrews; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello

Sterrenkundigen hebben rondom de jonge, veranderlijke ster RU Lupi, gelegen op een afstand van 400 lichtjaren in het sterrenbeeld Wolf (Lupus), een enorme spiraalstructuur van gas ontdekt. De spiraalarmen…

This Is What Sun-Like Stars Making Planets Look Like

“Owing to a new instrument on a remarkable telescope, the ESO's Very Large Telescope, we can now image protoplanetary disks directly. The SPHERE instrument, optimized for infrared exoplanet research, includes the IRDIS imager, designed for high-resolution viewing. When it looked at T Tauri stars, very young stars of 2 solar masses or less, here's what it saw. Regardless of age or mass, symmetric and well-defined rings, disks, and gaps exist around every one.”

What did our Solar System look like when it was just forming? How did we go from a single, central mass with a disk around it to a full-fledged planetary system with well-defined bodies and boundaries? Since the turn of the century, we’ve managed to image protoplanetary disks to unprecedented resolution, finding some with symmetric, ring-like features in them, and others with large, sweeping spiral shapes. Both classes should have planets, but which one was our Sun? In a new study that focused on low-mass protostellar systems, eight T Tauri stars, of two solar masses or less, were studied. Between the ages of 1 and 15 million years, they all exhibited the symmetric structures we saw hints of earlier, without any spiral perturbations at all.