SCIENCE

The great stellar dimming of T Tauri has begun | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Feb, 2025


This visible light image shows the T Tauri system along with the nearby nebula NGC 1555. Discovered way back in 1852, it is now known to be a young triple star system with a dusty disk of material surrounding the binary component, T Tauri South, which is too extincted to be observable in visible light. (Credit: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona)

It’s the ultimate game of cosmic “cover up,” as the dimming occurs when a circumbinary disk from a nearby star passes in front of T Tauri N.

The story of how own Sun was born remains a cosmic mystery.

This glimpse into the stars found in the densest region of the Orion Nebula, near the heart of the Trapezium Cluster, shows a modern glimpse inside a star-forming region of the Milky Way. However, star-formation properties vary over cosmic time, from galaxy to galaxy, at different radii from the galactic center, etc. All of these properties and more must be reckoned with to compare the Sun with the overall population of stars within the Universe. Note that our Sun, born 4.6 billion years ago, is younger than 85% of all stars. (Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/E.Feigelson & K.Getman et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/M. Robberto et al.)

Formed 4.6 billion years in the past, we can only see what presently survives.

Although we now believe we understand how the Sun and our Solar System formed, this early view of our past, protoplanetary stage is an illustration only. While many protoplanets existed in the early stages of our system’s formation long ago, today, only eight planets survive. Most of them possess moons, and there are also small rocky, metallic, and icy bodies distributed across various belts and clouds in the Solar System as well. (Credit: JHUAPL/SwRI)

But elsewhere in the galaxy, Sun-like stars form continuously.

This animation switches between an optical view of the dark molecular cloud that houses protostar L1527 (red circle), and infrared data from the WISE mission that showcases the protoplanetary system and its outflows directly. Many protostars are analogues of Sun-like stars, except show us what our Sun may have been like 4.6 billion years ago: back when it was first forming. (Credit: Yizhou Zhang (optical), NASA/ESA/ALLWISE (infrared))

One young example, T Tauri, became notable in the mid-1800s.

This expansive view of the T Tauri system and its surroundings reveals T Tauri tself next to a bright shining nebula: NGC 1555. Although other bright stars abound, not visible here are T Tauri (North)’s two trinary companions: T Tauri South a and b. Those two stars have a dusty disk around them, which may have begun passing in front of T Tauri North in recent years only. (Credit: T.A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOIRLab/NSF/AURA)

Not only does its brightness vary with time, but a nearby nebula shows variability as well.



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