A Disk and Jet in Haro 6-5B
Planets condense from disks. Several new
Hubble Space Telescope
pictures of stars surrounded by disks were
released earlier this week.
Since the glare of the central star usually
makes a surrounding disk hard to see, prior observations in
radio and
infrared light were used to isolate
systems where the disk was edge-on,
blocking much of the central starlight.
One such disk system, Haro 6-5B, is shown above in false color. Here, the central disk confines the
emitted light into an hourglass shape.
Complex
dust clouds appear dark.
A powerful protruding
jet is shown in green.
This budding planetary system measures 0.2 light-years across.
Quite possibly, our own Solar System looked like this about 5 billion years ago.