These images, like delicate paintings, lead us to the deep corners of distant galaxies. From the eagle-shaped silhouette with wings ready to fly, to the spinning top posture, to the ancient Japanese throwing ** shadow, they all tell the mystery and vastness of the universe.
However, these breathtaking graphics are not from the artist's imagination, but from real observations released today, and they depict the "Planetary Formation Disk" – a vortex of gas and dust around the young stars of the Milky Way. Although they are hundreds of light-years away, if not trillions of miles, as tiny as pinholes in the night sky, scientists have captured the shadows of more than 80 planet-forming disks in unprecedented detail with the help of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.
The images are a feast for the eyes, with each planetary disk having its own character. Some resemble perfect circles or "bowls" with a bright glow in the center; Others are like irregular spots, lacking even order. They come in different forms, like vivid paintings, showing the wonderful process of planet formation.
The planet-forming disk, a ring of gas and dust that revolves around a young star, is the key to scientists exploring the origins of life in the universe. Like a snowball, gravity and other forces collide and merge matter within the disk, eventually giving birth to the planets we know today.
In this unprecedented study, scientists released images of 86 young stars that form disks around planets. These stars are distributed in different star-forming regions of our galaxy, including Taurus, Xiashen-1, and Orion. Although the diversity of planetary forming disks is astonishing, scientists are still exploring the reasons behind it.
Among them, Taurus and Xiashen-1 are about 600 light-years from Earth, while Orion is a gas-rich cloud about 1,600 light-years from us and is known to be the birthplace of several stars with masses larger than the Sun. A star in the constellation Taurus, T Tau, whose planetary disk resembles a small salamander; Orion's V1012 is like an eagle flying high, soaring in the vast world of the universe.
The colors in these images are not smeared randomly, but rather represent visual aids at different levels of brightness. Purple represents the faint periphery of these disks, while orange and white reveal brighter regions closer to the center of the host star. These colors are intertwined into a brilliant picture that gives us a glimpse into the mysteries of the formation of planets.
With the help of the power of VLT, scientists have conducted an in-depth study of 86 stars in three different star-forming regions: Taurus, Xiashen-1 and Orion. These images not only show a magnificent view of the planetary forming disks, but also reveal the possible origins of life in the universe. As scientists say, this study is the largest of its kind to date, and it gives us a deeper understanding of how planets formed and the mysteries of life in the universe.