Astronomers Discover Young Stars with “Hula Hoop”

Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile spot a young stellar system that “blinks” every 93 days.

Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile have spotted a young stellar system that “blinks” every 93 days.

Called YLW 16A, the system likely consists of three developing stars, two of which are surrounded by a disk of material left over from the star-formation process.

As the two inner stars whirl around each other, they periodically peek out from the disk that girds them like a hula hoop. The hoop appears to be misaligned from the central star pair, probably as a result of the disrupting gravitational presence of the third star orbiting at the periphery of the system.

Above, an artist shows his conception of the system.

The whole system cycles through bright and faint phases, with the central stars playing a sort of cosmic peekaboo as the tilted disk twirls around them. It is believed that this disk should go on to spawn planets and the other celestial bodies that make up a solar system.

Spitzer observed infrared light from YLW 16A, emitted by the warmed gas and dust in the disk that still swathes the young stars. Other observations came from the ground-based 2MASS survey and the NACO instrument at the Very Large Telescope, which produces infrared images as sharp as if taken in space.