By Dean Murray via SWNS
Astronomers say they had a “thrill” upon discovering dramatic jets erupting from a pair of young stars.
Researchers used powerful telescopes to discover twin disks—and the twin parallel jets— emanating from the stars in a multiple-star system.
The observations, in wavelengths outside of the visible spectrum, were made by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO) ALMA telescope and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which were combined for the research.
ALMA and JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) observe very different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, so using them together allowed astronomers to discover these “twins”, hidden in radio and infrared wavelengths.
They were observed in star system WL20, located in the nearby rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud complex, over 400 light years away from Earth’s Solar System.
NRAO said: “Astronomers couldn’t believe their luck when observations across multiple radio and infrared wavelengths from ALMA and JWST revealed twin disks and jets erupting from a pair of binary stars in WL20.
“This discovery was unexpected, and unprecedented, given the age, size, and chemical makeup of the stars, disks, and jets. Their location in a known, well-studied part of the Universe adds to the thrill.”
Astronomer Mary Barsony was quoted by NRAO as saying: “What we discovered was absolutely wild. We’ve known about star system WL20 for a long time. But what caught our attention is that one of the stars in the system appeared much younger than the rest.
“Using MIRI and ALMA together, we actually saw that this ONE star was TWO stars right next to each other. Each of these stars was surrounded by a disk, and each disc was emitting jets parallel to the other.”
JPL scientist Michael Ressler says: “We had a very fortunate accident with what we found, and the results are stunning.”
