A weirdly warped planet-forming

disk circles a distant trio of stars

The bizarre geometry of this system is the first known of
its kind

The star system GW Orionis is surrounded by a complicated trio of rings that could form
planets, as shown in this artist’s illustration.
L. CALÇADA/ESO, S. KRAUS ET AL, UNIV. OF EXETER
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By Lisa Grossman

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020 AT 2:09 PM

In one of the most complex cosmic dances astronomers have yet spotted,
three rings of gas and dust circle a trio of stars.

The star system GW Orionis, located about 1,300 light-years away in the
constellation Orion, includes a pair of young stars locked in a close do-si-do
with a third star making loops around both. Around all three stars is a
broken-apart disk of dust and gas where planets could one day form.
Unlike the flat disk that gave rise to the planets in our solar system, GW
Orionis’ disk consists of three loops, with a warped middle ring and an inner
ring even more twisted at a jaunty angle to the other two.

The bizarre geometry of this system, the first known of its kind, is reported
in two recent studies by two groups of astronomers. But how GW Orionis
formed is a mystery, with the two teams providing competing ideas for the
triple-star-and-ring system’s birth.

In a Sept. 4 study in Science, astronomer Stefan Kraus of the University of

Exeter in England and colleagues suggest that gravitational tugs and
torques from the triple-star ballet tore apart and deformed the primordial
disk. But in a May 20 study in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Jiaqing Bi of
the University of Victoria in Canada and colleagues think that a newborn
planet is to blame.

“The question is how do you actually form such systems,” says theoretical
physicist Giuseppe Lodato of the University of Milan, who was not on either
team. “There could be different mechanisms that could do that.”