IM Lupi is a young stellar object with a surrounding

protoplanetary disk A protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disc of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star, a T Tauri star, or Herbig Ae/Be star. The protoplanetary disk may not be considered an accretion disk; while the two are sim ...

. The young star is suspected to host a still forming

protoplanet A protoplanet is a large planetary embryo that originated within a protoplanetary disk and has undergone internal melting to produce a differentiated interior. Protoplanets are thought to form out of kilometer-sized planetesimals that gravitatio ...

at a distance of 110

astronomical units The astronomical unit (symbol: au or AU) is a unit of length defined to be exactly equal to . Historically, the astronomical unit was conceived as the average Earth-Sun distance (the average of Earth's aphelion and perihelion), before its mode ...

(AU) and a mass of 2-3 . IM Lupi is 508

light-years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly , which is approximately 9.46 trillion km or 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by the International Astro ...

(156

parsec The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to or (AU), i.e. . The parsec unit is obtained by the use of parallax and trigonometry, and ...

) distant.

Star

The star IM Lupi was classified as a class II YSO with a spectral type M0. The star is probably not actively accreting, but there is evidence that the accretion is variable around IM Lupi. The young star is associated with the Lupus 2 Molecular Cloud.

Protoplanetary Disk

Many features at different wavelengths have been observed in this disk, which is very massive (0.17 ). The disk has a gas and a dust component. The gas component reaches out to 751 AU and the smaller dust component reaches out to 334 AU. In a scattered light image from

SPHERE A sphere (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ) is a surface (mathematics), surface analogous to the circle, a curve. In solid geometry, a sphere is the Locus (mathematics), set of points that are all at the same distance from a given point in three ...

the upper surface and part of the lower surface was imaged. Dust observations with

ALMA Alma or ALMA may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Alma'' (film), a 2009 Spanish short animated film * ''Alma'', an upcoming film by Sally Potter * ''Alma'' (Oswald de Andrade novel), 1922 * ''Alma'' (Le Clézio novel), 2017 * ''Alma'' ( ...

shows two rings and with SPHERE 2 additional rings were detected. ALMA observations at 1.25 mm shows a spiral pattern, which is also imprinted on the surface of the dusty part as seen by SPHERE. ALMA also observed the molecule ¹²CO, which traces the gas component of the disk. The CO observations show several deviations from Keplerian motion in the form of 16 kinks. The kinks and spirals could be caused by an undetected

planet A planet is a large, Hydrostatic equilibrium, rounded Astronomical object, astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets b ...

with a mass of 2-3 {{Jupiter mass orbiting at about 110 AU. It is also possible that gravitational instability causes the patterns in this disk.

References

Protoplanets Circumstellar disks Lupus (constellation)