Even as it forms within a cloud of gas and dust, a nascent star develops a doughnut-shaped disk around it. This is the “protoplanetary disk” that might spawn planets. Using an infrared telescope to peer inside a dusty stellar womb 1,000 light-years from Earth, astronomers say that they have found evidence of such a disk in one of its earliest stages of development.
Log in
Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.