Using ESO's
Very Large Telescope Interferometer, astronomers have discovered a disc of
silicate dust at the heart of the Ant Nebula. The disc seems, however, too lightweight
to explain how the nebula got its unique ant-like shape, with three nested
pairs of bipolar lobes.
The image
on the right shows a previously taken image of the Ant
Nebula. The image on the left shows a model of the dusty disc produced with
the more sensitive MID-infrared Interferometric instrument. The Ant Nebula is
located about 5 000 light-years away, and at that distance, seeing this disk is
comparable to sighting a two-story building on the moon.
The dust
mass stored in the disc appears to be only one hundred thousandth the mass of
the Sun, and is a hundred times smaller than the mass found in the bipolar
lobes.
Astronomers
are inclined to think that the large quantity of material in the lobes was caused
by several large-scale events, triggered by a cool stellar companion. Solving
the mystery will require more investigation of the hot central star and its probable
companion, hidden from our view by the dusty disc.
--ESO and SPACE.com
Staff
Credit: Stephane Guisard/ESO
