The star-forming cloud appears normal from a distance. Things got weirder and weirder when the team of astrophysicists got closer.
The researchers noticed that the cloud's magnetic field was strange. They looked at a newborn star within the cloud and found a hidden star.
The star's sibling is what the new study says. The stars formed far apart and one moved closer to the other. The cloud's dynamics were changed when the star traveled closer to it.
The new findings show how magnetic fields affect the early stages of star development.
This research will be presented by Cox at the AAS meeting. On Tuesday, June 14, there will be a session on Magnetic Fields and Galaxies. The study will be published.
Cox is a research associate at the center.
There's a twisted mystery.
There are a lot of stellar nurseries. When dense clouds of gas and dust collapse to form stars, they release stellar material at hypersonic speeds. There is a magnetic field around the cloud. Cox and her colleagues discovered that when they looked at the large-scale L483 cloud. The magnetic field was 888-609- 888-609- 888-609-
Things became strange when the astrophysicists took a closer look at NASA'sSOFIA. The magnetic field wasn't close to the newborn stars' outflows. The field was twisted at a 45 degree angle.
Cox said it matched what theory predicted. The magnetic field is controlling how the star forms. This parallelism is expected to be seen. Theory and observations can both be used.
The formation of a pair of planets.
Cox thinks a sibling star may be responsible for the field. The astrophysics team spotted a newborn star in an envelope. The second star, sharing the same stellar envelope, was spotted by the researchers at the ALMA.
Cox said that the stars are still forming. The stellar envelope is what gives the stars their shape. It's like rolling a snowball to make it bigger. Young stars are rolling in material to build up mass
The two young stars are about the same distance from the sun to the dwarf planet. When star-forming clouds are large enough to produce two stars or when the disc rotates around a young star, astrophysicists agree that a second star can be formed.
Cox suspects something strange is going on with the twin stars.
Cox said newer work suggests it's possible to have two stars form far away from each other and then one star moves in closer to form a binaries. We believe that is happening here. We don't know why one star would move towards another, but we think it was because of the magnetic field.
This new work could provide new insights into how planets form. Most people are familiar with the scene in "Star Wars" in which the hero gazes up at the stars of Tatooine. Scientists know that this scenario is more than just a science fiction story.
It is exciting to learn how planets and stars form at the same time, and how they interact with each other. We know that there are planets around these double stars, but we don't know how they differ from isolated stars. We will be able to test the results of the new instruments with a sample.
More information: Erin G. Cox et al, The Twisted Magnetic Field of the Protobinary L483, The Astrophysical Journal (2022). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac722a Journal information: Astrophysical Journal
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