Scientists spy dust 'doughnut' around young star

A close-up view of star LkHa101 taken in September, 1998

(CNN) -- New technology has allowed scientists to peer inside a distant, doughnut-shaped dust cloud surrounding a massive young star.

Researchers using the Keck telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, also got the first glimpse of the star's previously undetected companion star.

The new technology, an interferometer aperture mask, was placed in front of the telescope's secondary mirror, giving astronomers a view four times better than the Hubble Space Telescope for small fields of view.

Astronomers spotted regions in the surrounding dust cloud that are closer to the central star than anything previously seen, according to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland. They also were able, for the first time, to see the central void in the dust cloud caused by the star's intense heat and radiation.

Researchers are interested in the dust clouds because they may contain material that could form planets.

"We've seen the doughnut hole for the first time, and it's a lot bigger than people thought," said Goddard's William Danchi, in a statement.

Danchi is one of the authors of a paper describing the research in the February 22 issue of Nature.

"The interferometer technology demonstrated by our aperture mask lets us detect extraordinarily fine detail," added Peter Tuthill of Sydney University, Australia, primary author of the Nature paper.

"These images allow us to look back in time to understand better the origins of our sun and solar system," explained John Monnier of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Monnier also contributed to the paper.

The star, called LkHa101, is about 522 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Perseus. A light-year is the distance traveled by light in one year, almost 6 trillion miles.

Star LkHa101 and its companion star

Less than about 1 million years old, LkHa101 is still relatively young, having burned only about 1 percent of its estimated life span of about 100 million years.

The star is at least 5 times as massive as the Earth's sun and shines 40,000 times brighter. The central void of the star extends about 316 million miles, more than three times the Earth's distance from the sun.

Prior observations did not have sufficient resolution to detect its companion star, which orbits around LkHa101 at a distance of about 2.6 billion miles.

The team used the Near Infrared Camera (NIRC) instrument on Keck, which receives infrared light from celestial objects and can make images of the hottest regions in the dust clouds around young stars.

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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - Planetary System Formation
Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute
The Hubble Heritage Project
Mauna Kea Observatories

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