Dear Friends of Science and Astronomy,

Dusty discs found around hypergiant stars
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn8700-dusty-discs-found-around-hypergi\
ant-stars.html

a.. 10:37 09 February 2006
b.. NewScientist.com news service Dusty discs appear to surround two extremely
massive stars that blast their surroundings with searing radiation, new
observations with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal. The finding bolsters
other evidence suggesting planets may be able to form in violent environments.
Planets are thought to build up gradually from the collision of clumps of dust
in discs of gas and dust around stars. Most of the dusty discs discovered so far
surround stars of similar size to the Sun. But now, researchers led by Joel
Kastner of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, US, have found
dusty discs that appear to surround two hypergiant stars, dozens of times more
massive than the Sun.

That is surprising because the intense radiation from such massive stars was
thought to blow away any dust before it could clump into planets, says the team.
"Our data suggest that the planet-forming process may be hardier than previously
believed," Kastner says. That agrees with previous calculations showing that
radiation from massive stars may actually help seed planets around smaller stars
nearby.

Excitingly short
The discs surround two massive stars, named R 66 and R 126, which weigh 30 and
70 times as much as the Sun, respectively. Both stars lie in the Large
Magellanic Cloud, a galactic satellite of the Milky Way.

Both discs contain sand-like particles, but Spitzer was not able to determine
whether the discs also harbour larger bodies, such as comets or planets. The
stars are so massive, however, that they are expected to run out of their
nuclear fuel and explode as supernovae in just a few million years, probably
destroying any planets around them.

"We do not know if planets like those in our solar system are able to form in
the highly energetic, dynamic environments of these massive stars, but if they
could, their existence would be a short and exciting one," says team member
Charles Beichman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California
Institute of Technology, both in Pasadena, US.

Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal Letters (vol 638, p L29)

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