Overview
- New Hubble observations show IRAS 23077+6707 is the largest protoplanetary disk yet seen, spanning roughly 400 billion miles at a distance of about 1,000 light-years.
- The nearly edge-on system appears highly asymmetric, with long filaments and lofty wisps concentrated on one side of the disk.
- Researchers estimate the disk contains 10 to 30 Jupiter masses of material, sufficient to form multiple gas giant planets.
- The central object remains hidden by dust and could be a single hot star or a binary, and the images do not reveal any existing planets.
- The results, published Dec. 23 in The Astrophysical Journal, note no detectable jets and point to a relatively mature yet unsettled disk that teams will monitor with Hubble and JWST.