young star
By petro c. k.
accretion of dust
on a photo
When a star is just beginning to form, it collects a cloud of dust and particles that exist around it called a protoplanetary disk. It is thought the protoplanetary disk is connected to the star by a magnetic field, and the particles follow the field until they crash onto the surface of the growing star.
Studying and observing the phenomena of such dust in other stars gives new insights into how our own star, the sun – and our subsequent solar system – formed.
Further reading:
‘What Can a Young Star Teach Us about the Birth of Our Planet, Sun and Solar System?’, The Brink, Boston University: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2021/young-stars/
Author bio:
petro c. k. is a temporal being on a habitable rock spinning in space that tries to compress observations of an infinitesimally small section of the universe into haiku. You can catch up with petro on Twitter here: @petro_ck
Check out other sciku by petro c. k. here: ‘Saturn’s Moons’, ‘Marble’, and ‘Giggling’.