Shadow Play around Planet-Forming Disk at Young Star TW Hydrae | Hubble

Shadow Play around Planet-Forming Disk at Young Star TW Hydrae | Hubble

The young star TW Hydrae is playing "shadow puppets" with scientists observing it with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Distance: ~200 light years away

In 2017, astronomers reported discovering a shadow sweeping across the face of a vast pancake-shaped gas-and-dust disk surrounding the red dwarf star. The shadow is not from a planet, but from an inner disk slightly inclined relative to the much larger outer disk—causing it to cast a shadow. One explanation is that an unseen planet's gravity is pulling dust and gas into the planet's inclined orbit.

Now, a second shadow—playing a game of peek-a-boo—has emerged in just a few years between observations stored in Hubble's MAST archive. This could be from yet another disk nestled inside the system. The two disks are likely evidence of a pair of planets under construction.

TW Hydrae is less than 10 million years old and resides about 200 light-years away. In its infancy, our solar system may have resembled the TW Hydrae system, some 4.6 billion years ago. The TW Hydrae system is tilted nearly face-on to our view from Earth. Thus, it is an optimum target for getting a bull's-eye-view of a planetary construction yard. 

The second shadow was discovered in observations obtained on June 6, 2021, as part of a multi-year program designed to track the shadows in circumstellar disks. 

The disks may be proxies for planets that are lapping each other as they whirl around the star. It is sort of like spinning two vinyl phonograph records at slightly different speeds. Sometimes labels will match up but then one gets ahead of the other.

The suspected planets are located in a region roughly the distance of Jupiter from our Sun. And, the shadows complete one rotation around the star about every 15 years—the orbital period that would be expected at that distance from the star. 

Any inner planets would be difficult to detect because their light would be lost in the glare of the star. 

The TW Hydrae data are from Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. The James Webb Space Telescope's infrared vision may also be able to show the shadows in more detail.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Image 1 Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, John Debes (AURA/STScI for ESA)

Image 1 Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Image 2 Credits: NASA, AURA/STScI for ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)

Release Date: May 4, 2023

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