An international team of astronomers has unveiled the discovery of 80 newly formed stars in the proximity of the Sun, located within the constellations of Chamaeleon, Orion, and Taurus.
These stars are surrounded by protoplanetary disks, which are flat accumulations of gas and dust where planets are expected to form.
The research was conducted using a telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, allowing scientists to observe how the emerging and young stars’ surrounding protoplanetary disks scatter and polarize their radiation.
This observation enabled the astronomers to determine the size and structure of these gas and dust clouds.
Significantly, the astronomers identified large bends and areas of asymmetry in the structure of the protoplanetary disks around the young stars in the Orion constellation, indicating the formation of particularly large planets within these gas and dust accumulations.
This discovery was made through the study of three regions near Earth where stars are formed, located in the Chamaeleon, Taurus, and Orion constellations, ranging from 600 to 1600 light-years from Earth.
Each of these regions is a stellar nursery, hosting hundreds of stars, including some that are many times more massive than the Sun, making them of particular interest to the scientific community.
