In one of the largest ever surveys of planet-forming disks, a team of astronomers from more than ten countries studied more than 80 young stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, which may have planets forming around them, in order to shed light on the fascinating and complex process of planet formation.

Through stunning images, taken using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, the researchers studied a total of 86 stars in three different star-producing regions of the Milky Way: Taurus and Chameleon I, and both about 600 light-years away from Earth, and Orion, a gas-rich cloud about 1,600 light-years away that is known to be the birthplace of several stars more massive than the Sun.

To observe the discs the team used the sophisticated SPHERE instrument on board the VLT, which provides sharp images of the discs. Thus, the team was able to image disks around stars with a mass of only half the mass of the Sun, which are usually too faint for most other instruments available today. Additional data were obtained using the VLT’s X-shooter instrument, which allowed astronomers to determine how young and how massive the stars are. In addition, the ALMA radio telescope array in the Atacama Desert helped the team understand more about the amount of dust surrounding some of the stars.

To date, more than 5,000 planets have been discovered orbiting stars other than the Sun, often in systems significantly different from our own Solar System. To understand where and how this diversity arises, astronomers must observe the dust- and gas-rich disks surrounding young stars, the very cradles of planet formation.

The new images highlight this extraordinary diversity of planet-forming discs. The team was able to derive several key insights from the dataset. For example, in Orion they found that stars in groups of two or more were less likely to have large planet-forming disks.

This data will help researchers in unraveling the mysteries of planet formation. The three research papers are published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics”.