circumstellar disk Videos

Jupiter-Mass planet opens a gap in a solar nebula. The gas around the planet is heated by the accretion of mass onto the planetary surface. The simulation was done by HH Klahr and W. Kley at the University of Tübingen. The ray tracer used is PovRay 3.5. The purpose of this tracing is not a physical model that accurately reproduces photometry at various wavelengths or other fancy physical parameters. The idea is to visualize the development of density and size scales during the collapse. No ...

Author: Astropov; Tags: Astronomy Astrophysics Star Formation Planet Formation Raytracing

Astronomers are using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to probe the structures of circumstellar discs, the dusty discs that surround young stars, to look for the earliest signs of the formation of planetary systems. Examining young stars in the constellation of Taurus known to have such discs, Spitzer's ultra-sensitive infrared spectrograph instrument has detected the clearest evidence to date that an inner gap has formed in the disc surrounding the star CoKu Tau 4. Such a gap could indicate ...

Author: djxatlanta; Tags: exoplanets circumstellar disk infrared astronomy planet formation

material from its disk falling onto the central star. The stars brightness increased by a factor of 100, heating the disk far from the star. It appears that tiny dust particles far out in the disk melted slightly, or annealed. As they cooled they took on a new crystalline structure. This is the first time astronomers have ever caught crystals in the act of forming in a circumstellar disk. So how is it possible to detect such tiny crystals around a star thats so far away? Well, dust is ...

Author: Kowch737; Tags: star Ex Lupi infrared spitzer telescope

This animation shows the Sun being born and the planets of the Solar System forming from a disc of circumstellar material. Herschel will study the formation of stars and possible planetary systems around them in unprecedented detail.

Author: Kowch737; Tags: satellite time machine universe ESA

. Alpha Piscis Austrini is best known as Formalhaut the "Mouth of the Whale". This class-A main sequence star is about 25 light years from Earth, and like Vega, has an excess of infra-red radiation which indicated a circumstellar disk. Not only does it have a disk, but it has an extrasolar planet, too One that was photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2004 and 2006 and confirmed in 2008! The Jupiter-sized planet orbits about 11 billion miles away from the parent star and takes ...

Author: TheAstronomer2; Tags: video astronomy

The James M. DuPont Meteorite Collection - asteroid belt. Additional models are required if Jupiter and Saturn formed by gravitational instability in the less mature circumstellar disk of the Sun rather than by accumulation of planetesimals in the later preplanetary disk [3]. All these models must be developed to provide quantitative predictions regarding observational data, including the chemical and physical record in the meteorites. For example, the first model described provides a ...

Author: h4ck3rm1k3; Tags: Meteorite Life Fossils Cyanobacteria Carbonaceous

the discs that may hold important clues about the evolution of stars and their young planetary systems. In this animation, we focus on the disc of a young star. Light from the star is almost completely blocked by the thick dust and is seen only when it scatters off dust and gas above the disc plane. Delving in closer, we observe that the disc is composed of countless tiny grains of dust, some of which, according to Spitzer observations, have crystal structures. These dust grains may ...

Author: Magnetosheath; Tags: Icy Organics Planet Forming Discs Spitzer Space Telescope

formed from the missing material. This animation illustrates one possible scenario for the formation of an inner gap. Initially we see the circumstellar disc around a young star, made of the dust, ices and gases from which planets might form. As we move in to view the inner disc, an unstable ripple forms in the inner part of the disc. The force of gravity acts upon this ripple, allowing the material to rapidly condense into a new planet. The innermost portions of the disc that did not ...

Author: Magnetosheath; Tags: Planetary Gap Formation

This animation shows the evolution of a planet-forming disk around a star. Initially, the young disk is bright and thick with dust, providing raw materials for building planets. In the first 10 million years or so, gaps appear within the disk as newborn planets coalesce out of the dust, clearing out a path. In time, this planetary "debris disk" thins out as gravitational interactions with numerous planets slowly sweep away the dust. Steady pressure from the starlight and solar winds also ...

Author: djxatlanta; Tags: Spitzer Space Telescope exoplanets circumstellar disk solar system Kuiper Belt zodiacal light infrared astronomy

This artist's animation shows a brown dwarf surrounded by a swirling disk of planet-building dust. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope spotted such a disc around a surprisingly low-mass brown dwarf, or "failed star." The brown dwarf, called OTS 44, is only 15 times the size of Jupiter, making it the smallest brown dwarf known to host a planet-forming, or protoplanetary disk. Astronomers believe that this unusual system will eventually spawn planets. If so, they speculate that OTS 44's disk has ...

Author: djxatlanta; Tags: exoplanet circumstellar disk brown dwarf Spitzer Space Telescope infrared astronomy