Astronomers Capture Stunning Image Of Twin Baby Stars

Astronomers were able to peek inside the inner structure of a small cosmic cluster that contains two newborn stars. According to the astronomers, the stars are nourished by the pretzel-like disks around them.

Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Germany were able to capture an image of the twin baby stars using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) series of telescopes in Chile.

Based on their observations, the stars are located in a binary system known as BHB2007. The astronomers noted that this is the youngest member of a stellar cluster in the dark nebula Barnard 59, which is situated within the massive interstellar dust cloud known as the Pipe Nebula.

Prior observations on the system only revealed its outer layer. Fortunately, through ALMA, the astronomers were able to view the system’s inner structure.

As seen in the image taken using ALMA, the two bright stars are surrounded by huge looping disks, which the astronomers said resembled a pretzel.

“We see two compact sources that we interpret as circumstellar disks around the two young stars,” Felipe Alves of the MPE and the lead author of a new study about the binary system said in a press release.

“The size of each of these disks is similar to the asteroid belt in our Solar System,” he added. "The separation between them is 28 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth.”

As noted by the astronomers, the two looping disks are surrounded by a bigger one that is 80 times more massive than Jupiter, which is known as the largest planet in the Solar System.

These circumstellar disks are filled with gas and dust, which contribute to the growing mass of the two newborn stars. According to the astronomers, there are two stages involved in this process. First, the mass from cosmic materials is transferred into the individual disks. Then, the baby stars accrete the mass from the disks.

“We expect this two-level accretion process to drive the dynamics of the binary system during its mass accretion phase,” Alves explained. “While the good agreement of these observations with theory is already very promising, we will need to study more young binary systems in detail to better understand how multiple stars form.”

The findings of Alves and his team regarding the formation of the newborn stars were detailed in a new study published in the journal Science.