Astronomers spot a pair of solar systems in the making.Byline: ANI Washington, July 2 (ANI): Two University of Hawaii (body, education) University of Hawaii - A University spread over 10 campuses on 4 islands throughout the state. http://hawaii.edu/uhinfo.html. See also Aloha, Aloha Net. astronomers have found a binary star-disk system in which each star is surrounded by the kind of dust disk that is frequently the precursor of a planetary system planetary system, a star and all the celestial bodies bound to it by gravity, especially planets and their natural satellites. Until the last decade of the 20th cent. , which makes them solar systems in the making. The astronomers in question are doctoral student Rita Mann and Dr. Jonathan Williams For people called John Williams, see John Williams (disambiguation) The name Jonathan Williams can refer to a number of people:
A binary star system consists of two stars bound together by gravity that orbit a common center of gravity. Most stars form as binaries, and if both stars are hospitable to planet formation, it increases the likelihood that scientists will discover Earth-like planets. This binary system, 253-1536, stands out as the first known example of two optically visible stars, each surrounded by a disk with enough mass to form a planetary system like our own. It lies 1,300 light-years from Earth, in the famous Orion Nebula, the kind of rich cluster of stars that is a common birth environment for most stars in our Milky Way galaxy Milky Way Galaxy Large spiral galaxy (roughly 150,000 light-years in diameter) that contains Earth's solar system. It includes the multitude of stars whose light is seen as the Milky Way, the irregular luminous band that encircles the sky defining the plane of the galactic , including our Sun. One of the disks was discovered in an image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the first large optical orbiting observatory. Built from 1978 to 1990 at a cost of $1.5 billion, the HST (named for astronomer E. P. Hubble) was expected to provide the clearest view yet obtained of the universe. , but the other disk was hidden in the glare of the star. Hubble saw only the disk shadow, so the amount of material and its capability for planet formation was unknown until the UH team made the SMA (1) See SMA connector. (2) (Shared Memory Architecture) See shared video memory. (3) (Software Maintenance Association) A membership organization that began in 1985 and ended in 1996. observations. The two stars are 400 times farther from each other than Earth is from the Sun. They would take 4,500 years, or about the length of human recorded history, to complete one orbit around their common center. Both stars are only about a third the mass of our Sun and are much cooler and redder in color. The larger disk in 253-1536 is also the most massive found in the Orion Nebula so far. The discovery of this massive disk and the binary disk system improve our understanding of how common planet formation is in our Galaxy and place our Solar System in context. (ANI) Copyright 2009 Asian News International The Asian News International (ANI) agency provides multimedia news to China and 50 bureaus in India. It covers virtually all of South Asia since its foundation and presently claims, on its official website, to be the leading South Asia-wide news agency. (ANI) - All Rights Reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |
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