Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Debes (STScI); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

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.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-011

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: http://stsci.edu/copyright/