'Dracula's Chivito' looks stunning in this tasty Christmas photo from the Hubble Telescope
Using the Hubble space telescope, astronomers have imaged "'Dracula’s Chivito" the largest site of planetary birth ever seen.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have imaged the largest and most chaotic site of planetary birth humanity has ever seen.
Appearing like a stunning cosmic bat, this
, located around 1,000 light-years away, stretches out for around 400 billion years, around 40 times the size of our
, out to the ring of cometary bodies known as the Kuiper belt.
This protoplanetary disk with an infant star at its heart has the official designation IRAS 23077+6707, but also has the incredible nickname "Dracula’s Chivito." But it isn't just its staggering size and unique nickname that make IRAS 23077+6707 so remarkable.
A Hubble image of Dracula’s Chivito, the largest protoplanetary disk ever seen (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Kristina Monsch (CfA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))
"The level of detail we're seeing is rare in protoplanetary disk imaging, and these new Hubble images show that planet nurseries can be much more active and chaotic than we expected," team leader Kristina Monsch of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) said in a statement. “We're seeing this disk nearly edge-on, and its wispy upper layers and asymmetric features are especially striking."
Monsch added that both Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have glimpsed similar structures in other disks, but Dracula's Chivito provides astronomers with an exceptional perspective that allows them to trace its substructures in visible light at an unprecedented level of detail.
"This makes the system a unique, new laboratory for studying planet formation and the environments where it happens," Monsch continued.
The full Hubble image of IRAS 23077+6707, appearing like a cosmic steak sandwich (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Kristina Monsch (CfA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))
The unsymmetrical appearance of the gas and dust lanes in Dracula's Chivito in this stunning image indicates that dynamic processes are occurring within the disk as its morphology is gradually shaped by interactions with its surroundings.