How Circumstellar Disks Form and Evolve

Young Stars and Stellar Disks

The following images were taken by NASA Hubble Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). All of the objects are extremely young stars, 450 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Most of the nebulae represent small dust particles around...

Young Stars Surrounded by Disks of Dust

[Top left]: This Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) image shows Herbig-Haro 30 (HH 30), the prototype of a young star surrounded by a thin, dark disk and emitting powerful gaseous jets. The disk extends 40 billion miles from left to right in the image, dividing the nebula...

CoKu Tau/1

This image shows a newborn binary star system, CoKu Tau/1, lying at the center of four "wings" of light extending as much as 75 billion miles from the pair. The "wings" outline the edges of a region in the stars' dusty surroundings, which have been cleared by outflowing gas. A...

DG Tau B

An excellent example of the complementary nature of Hubble's instruments may be found by comparing the infrared NICMOS image of DG Tau B to the visible-light Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) image of the same object. WFPC2 highlights the jet emerging from the system,...

Haro 6-5B

This image of the young star Haro 6-5B shows two bright regions separated by a dark lane. As seen in the WFPC2 image of the same object, the bright regions represent starlight reflecting from the upper and lower surfaces of the disk, which is thicker at its edges than its...

HH 30 model comparison

(Left): The HST/WFPC2 image of the HH 30 disk (Right): A computer generated image of the disk based on a mathematical model of the dust illuminated by the central star.

DG Tau B: A Star System Emits Jets of Gas

An excellent example of the complementary nature of Hubble's instruments may be found by comparing the infrared NICMOS image of DG Tau B to the visible-light Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) image of the same object. WFPC2 highlights the jet emerging from the system,...

Haro 6-5B wider field

This wide-angle image (17,000 AU from top to bottom) shows the region around Haro 6-5b, which is located at the center of the field. Towards the bottom, colored in green, is a jet of glowing gas emitted from Haro 6-5b. The entire region is filled with dark dust. The disk of Haro...

Herbig-Haro 30

This Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) image shows Herbig-Haro 30 (HH 30), the prototype of a young star surrounded by a thin, dark disk and emitting powerful gaseous jets. The disk extends 40 billion miles from left to right in the image, dividing the nebula in two. The...

DG Tauri B: A Star With a Thick Dust Lane and Bright Gas Jet

DG Tauri B appears very similar to HH 30, with jets and a central dark lane with reflected starlight at its edges. In this WFPC2 image, the dust lane is much thicker than seen in HH 30, indicating that dusty material is still in the process of falling onto the hidden star and...

Haro 6-5B: A Disk of Dust Around a Star

Haro 6-5B is a nearly edge-on disk surrounded by a complex mixture of wispy clouds of dust and gas. In this WFPC2 image, the central star is partially hidden by the disk, but can be pinpointed by the stubby jet (shown in green), which it emits. The dark disk extends 32 billion...

HK Tauri

HK Tauri is the first example of a young binary star system with an edge-on disk around one member of the pair. The thin, dark disk is illuminated by the light of its hidden central star. The absence of jets indicates that the star is not actively accreting material from this...

I04016

I04016 - A very young star still deep within the dusty cocoon from which it formed is shown in this image of IRAS 04016+2610. The star is visible as a bright reddish spot at the base of a bowl-shaped nebula about 100 billion miles across at the widest point. The nebula arises...

I04248

I04248 - In this image of IRAS 04248+2612, the infrared eyes of NICMOS peer through a dusty cloud to reveal a double-star system in formation. A nebula extends at least 65 billion miles in opposite directions from the twin stars, and is illuminated by them. This nebula was...

I04302

This image shows IRAS 04302+2247, a star hidden from direct view and seen only by the nebula it illuminates. Dividing the nebula in two is a dense, edge-on disk of dust and gas which appears as the thick, dark band crossing the center of the image. The disk has a diameter of 80...

HK Tauri/c model comparison

Data [Left]: HST/WFPC2 image of HK Tauri/c, a young star with an edge-on disk of dust and gas. Light from the hidden star illuminates the dark disk at its upper and lower surfaces. The disk diameter is 210 AU. Model [Right]: Computer simulation of an edge-on dusty disk which has...

Four Young Stars With Nearly Edge-on Disks

Four young stars with nearly edge-on disks observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. All are shown at the same linear scale, with each box being 1200 astronomical units square (111 billion miles, or about 20 times the diameter of Neptune's orbit). The different sizes and...

Space Science Update: Spinning Stardust into Planets (Webcast)

Model of Stellar Disk and Planet Formation

This animation shows an approach a young stellar disk with age of about 100,000 years. The newborn star is surrounded by a dusty disk of gas. The densest material is confined to the disk midplane, which appears as a dark belt sihouetted against more tenuous material illuminated...