Weird and Wonderful Dusty Discs
The SPHERE instrument on ESO’s VLT has revealed dusty discs that surround nearby young stars in greater detail than ever before.
The discs around these stars contain the building blocks of planets...
… and the new images from SPHERE show what our own Solar System may have looked like in the early stages of its formation.
The discs display a bizarre variety of shapes, sizes and structures...
… some contain bright rings, some dark ring-shaped gaps and some even resemble hamburgers!
This new SPHERE data is helping astronomers to understand the complex mechanisms of planet formation.
Transcribed by ESO; Translated by —