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Stellar intruder makes a grazing hit-and-run on a pair of young stars - Syfy

Stellar intruder makes a grazing hit-and-run on a pair of young stars - Syfy

Stellar intruder makes a grazing hit-and-run on a pair of young stars - Syfy
Jan 18, 2022 1 min, 31 secs

However, new observations of a relatively nearby object change that game, showing what looks very much like what's expected of a star perturbing a disk.

There are two clusters of stars forming there, which contain many young stars.

Its origin was unknown, though a few ideas have been floated, such as it being the wall of a cavity carved out by an explosive outflow event from the young stars, or a spiral arm that formed due to instabilities in the huge disk of dust surrounding the binary.

One, which they call object C (A and B are the two stars in the binary) looks to be another young star that also may have a disk of material around it.

Object D is on the opposite side of the binary, closer to it, and likely is a clump of material that's fragmented away from the overall more smooth distribution of material around the stars.

If Object C really is a star, and is passing by the still-forming binary, then its gravity would warp the disk, and could pull a streamer of material out from behind it as it pulls away.

However, if Object C is disturbing the disk then it's expected that the material from farther out will fall onto the stars, creating correlated outbursts from both stars.

What's needed are deeper observations to reveal fainter material so that astronomers can try to untangle the structures around Z CMa and see if that streamer is physically connected to Object C, or if there is some other evidence that the streamer was pulled away from the binary by C's gravity.

It would also help to find more objects like this; if we find several more young stars with streamers that point to other nearby stars, then we can be more confident we're seeing a cosmic hit-and-run.

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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