About 1,000 light-years from Earth is a cosmic structure known as IRAS 23077+6707 (IRAS 23077), which resembles a giant butterfly.
Ciprian T. Berghea, an astronomer at the US Naval Observatory, originally observed the structure in 2016 using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS). To the surprise of many, the structure remained unchanged over the years, leading some to wonder what IRAS 2307 could be.
Recently, two international teams of astronomers conducted follow-up observations with the Submillimeter Array at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Hawaii to better understand IRAS 2307.
In a series of papers describing their findings, the teams revealed that IRAS 23077 is actually a young star surrounded by a massive protoplanetary debris disk, the largest ever observed. The discovery offers new insight into planet formation and the environments where it occurs.
The first paper, led by Berghea, reported the discovery that IRAS 23077 is a young star located at the center of what appeared to be a giant planetary disk. In the second paper, led by CfA postdoc Kristina Monsch, scientists confirm the discovery of this protoplanetary disk using data from Pan-STARRS and the Submillimeter Array (SMA).
The first paper was accepted for publication, while the second was published on May 13 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (in that order).
Protoplanetary disks are essentially planetary nurseries consisting of gas and dust that have settled around newly formed stars. Over time, these disks become rings as material in certain orbits coalesces into protoplanets, where they eventually become rocky planets, gas giants, and ice bodies.
For astronomers, these disks can be used to constrain the size and mass of young stars because they rotate with a specific signature. Unfortunately, getting accurate observations of these disks is sometimes made difficult by how they are oriented relative to Earth.
While some disks appear “face-on” because they are fully visible to Earth observers, some planet-forming disks (like IRAS 23077) are only visible “edge-on”, meaning that the disk blocks the light coming from the parent star. However, the signatures of dust and gas in these discs are still clear at millimeter wavelengths – which the SMA observes.
When the Pan-STARRS and SWA teams observed IRAS 23077 using the combined power of their observatories, they were quite surprised by what they saw.
Kristina Monsch, SAO astrophysicist and postdoctoral fellow at CfA, led the SMA campaign. As they reported their findings in a recent CfA press release:
“After learning about this possible planet-forming disk from the Pan-STARRS data, we wanted to observe it with the SMA, which allowed us to understand its physical nature. What we found was incredible – evidence that it is the largest planet- ever discovered is extremely rich in dust and gas, which we know are the building blocks of planets.”
“The data from the SMA offer us smoking gun evidence that it is a disk, along with an estimate of the system’s distance, that it is orbiting a star that is probably two to four times more massive than our Sun. With the SMA data, we can also consider the dust and gas in this planetary nursery, which we found has enough material to form many giant planets – at distances more than 300 times the distance between the Sun and Jupiter!”
After observing IRAS 23077, Berghea suggested the nickname “Dracula’s Chivito”, which paid homage to “Gomez’s Hamburger”, another protoplanetary disk that is only visible from the side.
First, because Berghea grew up in the Transylvania region of Romania, close to where Vlad the Impaler lived (the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s story), he designed Dracula.
Co-author Berghey Ana, who grew up in Uruguay, designed the “chivito,” a hamburger-like sandwich and the national dish of her ancestral country. Co-author Joshua Bennett Lovell, SAO astrophysicist and SMA Fellow at CfA, said:
“The discovery of a structure as extended and bright as IRAS 23077 raises several important questions. How many more of these objects have we missed? Further study of IRAS 23077 is warranted to explore possible pathways to planet formation in these extremely young environments.” and how they might compare to populations of exoplanets observed around distant stars more massive than our Sun.”
The discovery of this disk also prompts astronomers to search for similar objects in our galaxy. These observations could yield valuable information about planetary systems in their earliest stages of formation, which could lead to new insights into how the Solar System formed.
The SMA is an array of telescopes in Hawaii jointly operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) at Harvard & the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan.
This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.