An extremely rare quadruple-star system has been discovered by a team of Chinese astronomers and could hold answers as to how stars and planets are formed.
“All stars form in the densest gas region of the molecular cloud known as "dense core". Previous observation has shown that more "star babies" are in a stellar system, the smaller the proportion they take up in the whole. For higher-order stellar systems with over two star-members, how they are formed in dense cores remains ambiguous due to insufficient observations,” noted the press statement.
“They discovered a quadruple protostellar system in G206.93-16.61E2, a dense cold core located at 1,500 light-years from Earth within the Orion B GMC. The system consists of four members: two protostars, and two prestellar gas condensations that may also form low-mass stars in future,” revealed the press release.
"The exceptional compactness and close-proximity of this system is a fascinating discovery. The analysis suggests that this system is very likely to form a gravitationally bound quadruple star system in the future," said Ph.D. Luo Qiuyi at SHAO and the first author of the study.The researchers took a particular interest in the continuum ribbons, comparing them to those found in another quadruple system.
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