The dust absorbs visible light but is transparent to near - IR wavelengths, so astronomers use the near - IR range to peer through the dust and view complex processes in action, such as the formation of proto - planetary
discs around newborn stars.
Ask an astronomer how planets form, and she'll say parts of a giant wheel of gas and
dust around a newborn star, called a protoplanetary disk, somehow collapse into blobs.
These circumstellar disks are
common around newborn stars, and provide the raw materials for planets, which are formed as a result of accretion of dust and debris left over from the star's birth.
Planets, on the light side of the divide, may form from leftover gas and dust in discs
swirling around newborn stars, while stars and brown dwarfs form from the collapse of clumps of gas.
In the inner region of the dust disk where Earth formed, the temperature should not have been hot enough to vaporize carbon dust, according to recent observations of circumstellar debris
disks around newborn stars.
A team of astronomers is proposing that huge spiral patterns
seen around some newborn stars, merely a few million years old (about one percent our sun's age), may be evidence for the presence of giant, unseen planets.
Just recently, a collaboration of astronomers from ETH Zurich and Max Planck Institute for Astronomy used SPHERE to capture images of planetary disks that are
present around newborn stars.
At these wavelengths, astronomers can peer at the disks of gas and
dust around newborn stars, see into star - forming clouds, and observe early galaxies that are bright in submillimetre wavelengths but obscured by dust in optical light.
Protoplanetary disks are
common around newborn stars, and provide the raw materials for planets, which are formed as a result of accretion of dust and debris left over from the star's birth.