File:TW Hydrae Disk (2023-011).png

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DescriptionTW Hydrae Disk (2023-011).png	English: Comparison images from the Hubble Space Telescope, taken several years apart, have uncovered two eerie shadows moving counterclockwise across a gas-and-dust disk encircling the young star TW Hydrae. The disks are tilted face-on to Earth and so give astronomers a bird's-eye view of what's happening around the star. The left image, taken in 2016, shows just one shadow [A] at the 11:00 o'clock position. This shadow is cast by an inner disk that is slightly inclined to the outer disk and so blocks starlight. The picture on the left shows a second shadow that emerged from yet another nested disk [C] at the 7:00 o’clock position, as photographed in 2021. The original inner disk is marked [B] in this later view. The shadows rotate around the star at different rates like the hands on a clock. They are evidence for two unseen planets that have pulled dust into their orbits. This makes them slightly inclined to each other. This is a visible-light photo taken with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. Artificial color, to enhance details, has been added.
Date	4 May 2023 (upload date)
Source	TW Hydrae Disk
Author	IMAGE: NASA, ESA, STScI, John Debes (AURA/STScI for ESA) IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Other versions	TIFF version

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This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. NASA Hubble material (and ESA Hubble material prior to 2009) is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if ESA material created after 2008 or source material from other organizations is in use.
The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-26555, or for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre. Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or 2008 copyright statement at spacetelescope.org. For material created by the European Space Agency on the spacetelescope.org site since 2009, use the {{ESA-Hubble}} tag.

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File:TW Hydrae Disk (2023-011).tiff

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Author	Space Telescope Science Institute Office of Public Outreach
Image title	Our universe is so capricious it sometimes likes to play a game of hide and seek. In 2017 astronomers were surprised to see a huge shadow sweeping across a disk of dust and gas encircling the nearby young star TW Hydrae. The shadow is cast by an inner disk of dust and gas that is slightly tilted to the plane of the outer disk. The shadow can only be clearly seen because the system is tilted face-on to Earth, giving astronomers a bird’s-eye view of the disk as the shadow sweeps around the disk like a hand moving around a clock.But a clock has two hands (hours and minutes) sweeping around at different rates. And, it turns out, so does TW Hydrae. Astronomers used Hubble to find a second shadow emerging from yet another inner disk, that is tilted to the two outer disks. So the system looks increasingly complicated with at least three nested disks slightly tilted relative to each other. The disks are proxies for unseen planets around the star. Each planet is gravitationally pulling on material near the star an warping what would have been a perfectly flat pancake-disk if no planets were present. This is not a surprise because the planets in our solar system have orbital planes that vary in tilt by a few degrees from each other. TW Hydrae gives astronomers a ringside seat to how our solar system may have looked during its formative years.
Short title	HUBBLE FOLLOWS SHADOW PLAY AROUND PLANET-FORMING DISK
Credit/Provider	NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Debes (STScI); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Headline	Unseen Newborn Planets Are Stirring Up Dust Around A Young Sta
Source	STScI
Usage terms	http://stsci.edu/copyright/
Date and time of data generation	00:00, 4 May 2023
Color space	sRGB
Exif version	2.31
Image width	1,452 px
Image height	726 px
Bits per component	8 8 8
Height	726 px
Width	1,452 px
Pixel composition	RGB
Number of components	3
Horizontal resolution	71.98 dpi
Vertical resolution	71.98 dpi
Contact information	outreach@stsci.edu http://stsci.edu 3700 San Martin Drive Baltimore, MD, 21218 USA 410-338-4444
Keywords	TW Hydrae
Date and time of digitizing	07:56, 21 March 2023
Date metadata was last modified	11:14, 25 April 2023
Unique ID of original document	FD7CE3EA77E82EFC46401AB061742D50
File change date and time	11:00, 25 April 2023

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