Astronomers have found a planet-forming disk that looks like a solar system on steroids.
New images from NASA‘s Hubble Space Telescope have revealed an enormous, oddly shaped disk of gas and dust around a single massive star or pair of stars about 1,000 light-years away in space. This thing spans nearly 400 billion miles — 40 times the width of everything around the sun, including the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt of comets.
The telescope has captured the system from its side profile, allowing researchers to study its structure in unusual detail. This makes the object, known as IRAS 23077+6707, a sort of laboratory for the planet-making industry, said Kristina Monsch, lead author of the new paper, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal.
And what researchers found was that making new worlds can be a messy business.
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