Like a fly that wanders into a flashlight’s beam, a protoplanetary disk surrounding the young star HBC 672 is casting a giant shadow, nicknamed the ‘Bat Shadow.’ The near-infrared vision of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this shadow of HBC 672’s disk, which resides approximately 1,300 light-years away in a star-forming region called the Serpens Nebula.
This Hubble image shows the Serpens Nebula, a stellar nursery about 1,300 light-years away. Within the nebula, in the upper right of the image, a shadow is created by the protoplanetary disk surrounding HBC 672. While the disk of debris is too tiny to be seen even by Hubble, its shadow is projected upon the cloud in which it was born. In this view, the feature, the Bat Shadow, spans approximately 200 times the diameter of our own Solar System. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI.
The Serpens Nebula is a reflection nebula that owes most of its sheen to the light emitted by stars like HBC 672.
“Two vast cone-like shadows on the Serpens Nebula are cast by the protoplanetary disk surrounding HBC 67,” Hubble team members said.
“By clinging tightly to the star the disk creates an imposing shadow, much larger than the disk.”
“The disk’s shadow is similar to that produced by a cylindrical lamp shade,” they explained.
“Light escapes from the top and bottom of the shade, but along its circumference, dark cones of shadow form.”
HBC 67’s protoplanetary disk itself is so small and far away from Earth that not even Hubble can detect it encircling its host star.
However, the shadow feature reveals details of the disk’s shape and nature.
The presence of a shadow implies that the disk is being viewed nearly edge-on.
“Whilst most of the shadow is completely opaque, we can look for color differences along its edges, where some light gets through,” the astronomers noted.
“Using the shape and color of the shadow, we can determine the size and composition of dust grains in the disk.”
The whole Serpens Nebula, of which this Hubble image shows only a tiny part, could host more of these shadow projections.
It envelops hundreds of young stars, many of which could also be in the process of forming planets in a protoplanetary disk.
“Although shadow-casting disks are common around young stars, the combination of an edge-on viewing angle and the surrounding nebula is rare,” the scientists said.
“However, in an unlikely coincidence, a similar looking shadow phenomenon can be seen emanating from another young star, in the upper left of the image.”
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