{"id":220029,"date":"2025-12-31T14:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T14:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/220029\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T14:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T14:49:07","slug":"behold-draculas-chivito-the-largest-planet-nursery-astronomers-have-ever-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/220029\/","title":{"rendered":"Behold \u2018Dracula\u2019s Chivito,\u2019 the Largest Planet Nursery Astronomers Have Ever Seen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roughly 1,000 light-years away from Earth, a gigantic disk of gas and dust is swirling around a young star and giving rise to new planets. Not only is it the largest planet-forming disk<\/a> astronomers have ever found, its behavior is different than any seen before.<\/p>\n

The disk spans nearly 400 billion miles (640 billion kilometers)\u2014that\u2019s about 40 times wider than our entire solar system. While it was first identified in 2016, astronomers have now used NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> to capture the first image of this planetary nursery in visible light. The new images revealed an unusually chaotic environment, with wisps of material stretching farther above and below the disk than expected. Strangely, these extended filaments are concentrated on just one side of the disk.<\/p>\n

The team published its findings on December 23 in The Astrophysical Journal,<\/a> including a nickname for the baffling space object: \u201cDracula\u2019s Chivito,\u201d a nod to the heritage of two of the researchers, one from Transylvania (home of Dracula) and one from Uruguay (home of the chivito, an iconic beefsteak sandwich). When viewed edge-on, the planet-forming disk resembles a sandwich, with a dark central lane flanked by white top and bottom layers of gas and dust.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe level of detail we\u2019re seeing is rare in protoplanetary disk imaging<\/a>, and these new Hubble images show that planet nurseries can be much more active and chaotic than we expected,\u201d Kristina Monsch, study lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics (CfA), a collaboration between Stanford University and the Smithsonian, said in a NASA statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing this disk nearly edge-on and its wispy upper layers and asymmetric features are especially striking,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

A lopsided celestial sandwich <\/p>\n

All planets form from disks of gas and dust encircling young stars. Astronomers have long believed that these protoplanetary disks were relatively orderly, serene environments where planets gradually coalesce over millions of years. Recent studies have challenged that assumption, pointing to greater complexity and diversity among these systems. Hubble\u2019s new image of Dracula\u2019s Chivito adds to this growing body of evidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were stunned to see how asymmetric this disk is,\u201d co-author Joshua Bennett Lovell, also an astronomer at the CfA, said in the statement. \u201cHubble has given us a front row seat to the chaotic processes that are shaping disks as they build new planets\u2014processes that we don\u2019t yet fully understand but can now study in a whole new way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that Dracula\u2019s Chivito\u2019s extended filaments only appear on one side suggests that dynamic processes\u2014like gas and dust falling into the disc, or other interactions with the space outside it\u2014are shaping the celestial sandwich.<\/p>\n

A model for the early solar system <\/p>\n

The disk obscures the young star (or stars) within it, but the researchers believe it could harbor either a single massive, hot star or a binary pair. The disk itself contains 10 to 30 times more mass than Jupiter, meaning there\u2019s enough material to form multiple gas giant planets. As such, Dracula\u2019s Chivito is basically a scaled-up model of what our solar system looked like 4.6 billion years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn theory, [Dracula\u2019s Chivito] could host a vast planetary system,\u201d Monsch said. \u201cWhile planet formation may differ in such massive environments, the underlying processes are likely similar. Right now, we have more questions than answers, but these new images are a starting point for understanding how planets form over time and in different environments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dracula\u2019s Chivito is therefore a natural laboratory for studying planet formation, says Monsch. Hubble and other space telescopes, such as NASA\u2019s James Webb, will continue observing this unique disk to uncover what\u2019s shaping its bizarre structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roughly 1,000 light-years away from Earth, a gigantic disk of gas and dust is swirling around a young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[908,1508,61,60,91,50314,82,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-220029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-hubble-space-telescope","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-nasa","13":"tag-protoplanetary-disks","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}