Steward Observatory Astronomers Discover Ultra-rare Two-Armed Spiral in Planet Forming Disk
First year Steward Observatory graduate student Kevin Wagner and his advisor Dr. Daniel Apai were hunting for exoplanets in the Lower Centaurus Crux association when they discovered a brilliant two-armed spiral structure around the young Herbig Ae star HD 100453A. Spiral arms in protoplanetary disks are extremely rare, with only two other similar known objects. The team's images also reveal for the first time a large gap extending to ~21 au from the star, or to about the orbit of Uranus. Both features are seen as a "smoking gun" of planets or other massive bodies interacting with their parent disks. The details of how these planets interact with their host system is an important piece of the planet formation theory that still has relatively few observational constraints. It is still unclear whether the spiral arms are driven by the medium separation binary HD 100453 B at 120 au, and/or by yet unseen planets inside of the spiral arms that are also likely to be responsible for clearing the gap. So far, this newly discovered intricate and puzzling system has raised more questions than it has provided answers, and the team at Steward Observatory can't wait for their next more detailed images.
The UA press release can be found HERE. A blowup of the figure can be found HERE.
For Public
Public events include our Monday Night Lecture Series, world-reknowned Astronomy Camp and Mt Lemmon Sky Center.
For Students
A good place to start if you want to become an undergrad major or grad student, or need to find our schedule of classes.
For Scientists
Find telescopes and instruments, telescope time applications, staff and mountain contacts, and faculty and staff scientific interests.
