Protoplanetary Disk: Simulated Spiral Arm vs. Observational Data
[Right] — Observations taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope show a protoplanetary disk around the young star MWC 758. The disk has two spiral arms that extend over 10 billion miles from the star.
[Left] — A computer model reproduces the two-spiral-arm structure; the "x" is the location of a putative planet. The planet, which cannot be seen directly, probably excites the two spiral arms.
Link:
Credit:NASA, ESA, ESO, M. Benisty et al. (University of Grenoble), R. Dong (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), and Z. Zhu (Princeton University)
About the Image
About the Object
| Name: | MWC 758 |
| Type: | Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Young Stellar Object |
| Distance: | 650 light years |
| Category: | Stars |
