HR 4796A: A Recipe for Planets

About This Image

Two hundred and twenty light years from Earth, planets are forming. Recent observations of the binary star system HR 4796 have shown that one of the stars is surrounded by a dusty gaseous disk. This disk is of the right size, age, and density for dust pellets to accrete surrounding matter. A hole in the disk's center indicates that increasingly larger condensates are colliding and sticking together, coalescing into moons and planets. Pictured above is a false-color image of the system, with the bright star HR 4796A indicated by a cross. The disk measures about five times the size of our Solar System, and is seen nearly edge-on. HR 4796 is in the southern constellation Centaurus.