Oldest known planet-forming disk: Citizen scientists and professional astronomers join forces
Friday, October 21, 2016 - 12:01
in Astronomy & Space
A group of citizen scientists and professional astronomers, including Carnegie's Jonathan Gagné, joined forces to discover an unusual hunting ground for exoplanets. They found a star surrounded by the oldest known circumstellar disk—a primordial ring of gas and dust that orbits around a young star and from which planets can form as the material collides and aggregates.