2024-04-12 18:45:33
Birth of a gas giant in orbit around a young star. Neighboring stars that are too heavy can prevent this process. Image: ESO/L. Calcada
In order to develop a planetary system, a star needs a quiet environment. Massive giant stars in the neighborhood tend to be a nuisance, as an example from the Orion Nebula shows.
There are two types of stars. There are those who raise their planetary family in peace, use the resources available to them sparingly and end a long, uneventful existence with an equally unspectacular end. Our sun is a good example of this group. And then there are the giant stars: When they were born, these objects were treated to too much fuel, which they then burn in record time to avoid collapsing due to their own mass. The giant stars irradiate their surroundings with high-energy radiation and, after a short time, burst into supernova explosions that cause turbulence in the surrounding area. Astronomers working with Olivier Berné from the Université de Toulouse have now found a vivid example of an emerging star from the first group, whose planetary family planning is being seriously disrupted by troublemakers from the second group.
Berné and his colleagues pointed the James Webb Space Telescope and the Alma Radio Telescope in Chile at an object called d203-506 in the Orion Nebula, 1,600 light-years from the Solar System. The Orion Nebula is the closest star-forming region to us. Here, several hundred stars of both types mentioned above form in a comparatively small area of 30 light-years. The object the astronomers are targeting is a “quiet” star that is still forming, still surrounded by a disk-like cloud of gas and dust in which planets would normally form.
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