Astronomers have found a disk around a star in the HH 1177 system, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way. It is the first time that a disk of this type has been found outside our galaxy.
The new observations reveal a massive young star, growing and accumulating matter around it, forming a rotating disk. It was detected using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (Alma) radio observatory in Chile.
“When I first saw evidence of a rotating structure in the Alma data, I couldn’t believe we had detected the first extragalactic accretion disk, it was a special moment,” he said. Anna McLeod associate professor at the University of Durham, in the United Kingdom, and lead author of the study published this Wednesday (29) in Nature.
“We know that disks are vital for the formation of stars and planets in our galaxy, and, for the first time, we are seeing direct evidence of this in another galaxy,” he added.
The study follows up on observations carried out by the European Southern Observatory, which detected a jet coming from a forming star deep in a gas cloud in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
“We discovered a jet being launched from a young massive star and its presence is a signal for continued disk accretion,” said McLeod.
To confirm the presence of the disk, the team needed to measure the movement of dense gas around the star.
As matter is pulled toward a growing star, it cannot fall directly onto it; instead, it flattens into a rotating disk around the star. Closer to the center, the disk spins faster, and this difference in speed is the smoking gun that shows astronomers that an accretion disk is present.
“The frequency of light changes depending on how quickly the gas emitting the light approaches or moves away from us,” explained JJonathan Henshaw researcher at Liverpool John Moores University, in the United Kingdom, and co-author of the study.
“This is the same phenomenon that occurs when the tone of an ambulance siren changes as it passes by you and the frequency of the sound goes from higher to lower,” he added.
See also: Ghostly lights paint a new portrait of the Milky Way
Source: CNN Brasil
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