Astronomy Picture of the Day 6-07-02

NASA ^ | 6-07-02 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell

[petuniasevan]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2002 June 7

Portrait of an Infant Solar System
Credit: N. Grosso (MPE), et al., European Southern Observatory

Explanation: This infant solar system was discovered posing along the lonely outskirts of the Rho Ophiuchi dark cloud, a star forming region 500 light-years from Earth. Enlarged in this infrared false-color portrait from the European Southern Observatory's Antu telescope, the dark dusty disk of planet-forming material lies edge-on, neatly dividing two small nebulae which reflect light from a hidden, youthful central star. Enthusiastically nicknamed the "Flying Saucer", the circumstellar disk is about 300 astronomical units across (1 a.u. is the Earth-Sun distance) or about 5 times the diameter of Neptune's orbit. The twin reflection nebulae have clearly different colors for reasons which still remain a mystery, but the relatively isolated neighborhood of the natal solar system is a stroke of luck. Planets should be able to develop within the dusty disk free from the destructive influence of radiation and winds from any nearby massive hot stars usually found in young star clusters.

[petuniasevan]

Infrared photography allows us to see into dusty regions which are obscured in visible light.

Here is a solar system in the making.

One day in the far distant future its planets will be formed and the parent star will shine forth
unobscured by the dust that will then form the planets.

[petuniasevan]

APOD PING!

[headsonpikes]

'Kootchy-koo' to the infant solar system. ;^)

[aomagrat]

500 light years. That's close!

[petuniasevan]

Right down the block, galactically speaking!

[RightWhale]

Planets should be able to develop within the dusty disk

We could use some fresh real estate. Anything we can do to help this along?

[petuniasevan]

Patience. In, say, a million years or so, there might be a couple of promising planets forming.
But then we'd have to wait for the heavy meteoric bombardment to end and the planets to cool from red-hot.
That'll take, oh, say 10 million more years. Then we'll have to talk about atmosphere formation and composition.
That'd be a while. So be patient. Good things come to those who wait (and wait, and wait).

[RightWhale]

What if we do some cloud seeding, you know, a few chemtrails, something sticky, an agglutinative agent? Who wants to wait a billion years and even then end up with a massive gas giant next to the star and not much else.

[sleavelessinseattle]

Eddies in the gravitational field...and he won't come back inside! MA!!! Eddies in the field again!!!!