The James Webb Space Telescope, a collaboration between NASA, ESA, and CSA, has captured unprecedented images of two young stars surrounded by planet-forming disks, Tau 042021 and Oph 163131. These images provide a rare edge-on view of how worlds similar to ours might form. Astronomers involved in the project explain that protoplanetary disks emerge around newborn stars when a gas cluster within a massive molecular cloud collapses to form a star, leaving gas and dust orbiting in a thick disk.
Over time, this dust collides and collapses, slowly forming planetesimals that can eventually evolve into planets. Planetesimals that fail to become full-fledged planets remain as asteroids and comets orbiting the star. The gas not consumed by this process is dissipated by the radiation of the new star over tens of millions of years, ending the protoplanetary disk. This process was crucial in the formation of our own Solar System, giving rise to the asteroids, comets, gas giants, and terrestrial planets that exist today.
By observing other protoplanetary disks at much younger ages, it is possible to understand how this process worked for the Solar System and how the different types of planets seen throughout the galaxy could have formed. The new images of the protoplanetary disks Tau 042021 and Oph 163131, also known as 2MASS J04202144+2813491 and 2MASS J16313124-2426281, were captured using Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI instruments. Tau 042021 is located about 450 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, while Oph 163131 is approximately 480 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus.
The peculiarity shared by these two objects is that, from Webb’s perspective, they are oriented with the edge of the disk facing the observer. This means that the intense light from the young star at the center is mostly blocked, and it is possible to see the fine dust that has risen from the disk as a nebula above and below it, illuminated by the star’s reflected light. Not only is this view incredibly beautiful, producing images reminiscent of colorful spinning tops in space, but it is also essential for studying the composition of these planet-forming disks. The distribution of dust in the disk, both within and above or below it, strongly affects where and how planets can form.
For more details, Sci.News offers an in-depth analysis of these fascinating discoveries.
Original published at O Cafezinho.