First Detailed Image of Dust Disc around Young Star

[n2doc]

ann1058 — Announcement
ESO’s VLT Takes First Detailed Image of Disc around Young Star
9 September 2010


New research carried out using ESO telescopes has, for the first time, allowed astronomers to reconstruct a detailed picture of the inner disc of matter around a young star. Stéphanie Renard of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Grenoble and colleagues used the ESO VLT Interferometer to probe the secrets of the star HD 163296.

Young stars are surrounded by discs of dust and gas and scientists believe that it is in these discs that planets are born. Dusty grains in the disc stick to each other to make larger lumps that in turn also aggregate together. This growth is expected to continue until rocky bodies about the size of the Earth are formed.

“The power of the VLT Interferometer to probe very fine details now allows us to see the inner region very close to the star where there is not expected to be any dust. The new images reveal the ring-shaped structure of this very elusive region,” said Renard.

No single telescope currently in operation has vision acute enough to study such tiny and distant objects. The size of the region of the disc observed corresponds to 150 million kilometres — about the distance between the Earth and the Sun, but located at 360 light-years from Earth.

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http://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann1058/