eso0214 — Press Release
Infrared Images of an Infant Solar System
7 May 2002: Using the ESO 3.5-m New Technology Telescope and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) , a team of astronomers [1] have discovered a dusty and opaque disk surrounding a young solar-type star in the outskirts of a dark cloud in the Milky Way. It was found by chance during an unrelated research programme and provides a striking portrait of what our Solar System must have looked like when it was in its early infancy. Because of its striking appearance, the astronomers have nicknamed it the "Flying Saucer." The new object appears to be a perfect example of a very young star with a disk in which planets are forming or will soon form, and located far away from the usual perils of an active star-forming environment . Most other young stars, especially those that are born in dense regions, run a serious risk of having their natal dusty disks destroyed by the blazing radiation of their more massive and hotter siblings in these clusters. The star at the centre of the "Flying Saucer", seems destined to live a long and quiet life at the centre of a planetary system, very much like our own Sun. This contributes to making it a most interesting object for further studies with the VLT and other telescopes. The mass of the observed disk of gas and dust is at least twice that of the planet Jupiter and its radius measures about 45 billion km, or 5 times the size of the orbit of Neptune.