This close-up image of asteroid Itokawa was taken by the Hayabusa spacecraft in 2005 near its closest approach to the asteroid. Different parts of the asteroid have different densities, indicating that it formed as a contact binary from two predecessor "dirty snowball" asteroids, Itokawa likely has a history where several different smaller objects merged together to form what we see today: a common story among asteroid belt and Kuiper belt objects in our Solar System. This image shows the Orion Molecular Clouds, the target of the VANDAM survey.
Yellow dots are the locations of the observed protostars on a blue background image made by Herschel. Side panels show nine young protostars imaged by ALMA (blue) and the VLA (orange). Protoplanetary disks not only are rich in organic molecules, but contain species that are not often seen in typical interstellar dust clouds.
For several million years after the protostar phase completes and the star reaches equilibrium, circumstellar gas-rich material can persist. . Dagnello; Herschel/ESA Molecular gas clouds contract, fragment, and portions of them collapse. This false-color look inside the star-forming region G333.23–0.06 shows ALMA data of multiple systems of high-mass protostars.
Within these clumps of matter, ALMA has found multi-star systems, with singlet stars being a relative rarity. . Neidel, MPIA Graphics Department; Data: ALMA Observatory Some fragmented regions form protostars, surrounded by a protoplanetary disk. This planet-forming protoplanetary disk, IRAS 04302+2247, is one of the closest examples of a protostar with a protoplanetary disk to Earth: just 525 light-years away.
JWST reveals a streak of dusty gas that represents a protoplanetary disk, while the bipolar ejection shows protostellar material being blown away perpendicular to the disk. There is likely a combination of inflows and outflows occurring here, making it difficult to know how massive the star at the center will ultimately become. After the star’s birth, imperfections within the disk rapidly grow and evolve.
These figures show several different detection bands of the observations of WISPIT 2, revealing the protoplanetary disk and gaps within it, as well as the presence of a directly imaged planet about five times the mass of Jupiter: WISPIT 2b. Along the bottom row, five different detection images all reveal WISPIT 2b’s presence with the Very Large Telescope’s SPHERE instrument. .F. van Capelleveen et al., Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2025 After another few million years, a planetary system typically results. This image, from ALMA, shows the protoplanetary disk around HL Tauri.
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