September 4, 2020

GW Orionis seen by ALMA and SPHERE (Image ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), ESO/Exeter/Kraus et al.)

An article published in the journal “Science” reports a research on the characteristics of the circumstellar disk of the GW Orionis system, or GW Ori, warped by the action of the three stars that form it. A team of researchers used the AMBER and later GRAVITY and SPHERE instruments mounted on ESO’s VLTI and the ALMA radio telescope to observe the disk’s twisted shapes and the three rings into which it’s divided, which are misaligned. The innermost ring is made up of an amount of materials estimated to be about 30 times the Earth’s mass, so planets could form. The goal of the studies of this triple system is to understand if planets with stable orbits can form in its rings, a step forward to understand this type of processes in double or multiple systems.