UX Tauri, abbreviated as UX Tau, is a binary star system approximately 450 light-years away in the constellation of

Taurus Taurus is Latin for 'bull' and may refer to: * Taurus (astrology), the astrological sign * Taurus (constellation), one of the constellations of the zodiac * Taurus (mythology), one of two Greek mythological characters named Taurus * '' Bos tauru ...

(the

Bull A bull is an intact (i.e., not castrated) adult male of the species ''Bos taurus'' (cattle). More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species (i.e., cows), bulls have long been an important symbol in many religions, includin ...

). It is notable for the fact that, despite its recent (in stellar terms)

creation Creation may refer to: Religion *''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing * Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it * Creationism, the belief tha ...

, the Spitzer Space Telescope discovered that its

protoplanetary disk A protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disc of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star, a T Tauri star, or Herbig Ae/Be star. The protoplanetary disk may also be considered an accretion disk for the star itself, be ...

contains a gap. The dust, which normally accumulates in an expanding ring starting right next to the star at such a young age, is either very thin or nonexistent at a range of 0.2 to 56 AU from the star. Typically, this means that the early ancestors of planets may be forming from the disk, though the star only ignited about 1 million years ago. In contrast,

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

was formed approximately 4.54 billion years ago, placing its formation about sixty million years after the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

's ignition around 4.6 billion years ago.

References

External links

* * Circumstellar disks Binary stars T Tauri stars Taurus (constellation) Hypothetical planetary systems Tauri, UX K-type main-sequence stars M-type main-sequence stars Emission-line stars 285846 020990 {{Multi-star-stub

See also

References

External links