Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have captured a high-resolution image of HL Tauri, a young star in the constellation of Taurus.
HL Tauri lies in the direction of the constellation Taurus at a distance of 450 light-years.
Also known as EPIC 210690913, HH 150 or TIC 353752575, the star is thought to be less than 100,000 years old.
The protoplanetary disk around HL Tauri is unusually massive and bright, which makes it an excellent place to search for signs of forming planets.
“Planetary formation is a complex process that we still don’t fully understand,” said Worcester State University astronomer Ian Stephens and his colleagues.
“During this process, dust grains in the disk are growing in size as they collide and stick to each other, causing them to slowly grow to potentially become objects similar to those within our Solar System.”
“One of the ways to study dust grains in these complex structures is to look at the orientation of the light waves they emit, which is known as polarization.”
Earlier studies of HL Tauri have mapped this polarization, but Dr. Stephens and co-authors captured a polarization image of HL Tauri in unprecedented detail.
The resulting image is based on 10x more polarization measurements than of any other disk, and 100x more measurements than most disks.
It is by far the deepest polarization image of any disk captured thus far.
“The image was captured at a resolution of 5 astronomical units (AU), which is about the distance from the Sun to Jupiter,” the astronomers said.
“Previous polarization observations were at a much lower resolution and didn’t reveal the subtle patterns of polarization within the disk.”
“For example, we found the amount of polarized light to be greater on one side of the disk than the other, which is likely due to asymmetries in the distribution in the dust grains or their properties across the disk.”
“Dust grains aren’t often spherical. They…
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