PDS 110 is a young 11th

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

located approximately away in the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellati ...

Orion Orion may refer to: Common meanings * Orion (constellation), named after the mythical hunter * Orion (mythology), a hunter in Greek mythology Arts and media Fictional entities Characters and species * Orion (character), a DC Comics c ...

. A series of eclipses was observed in 2008 and 2011, which may have been caused by dust from the star's

circumstellar disk A Circumstellar disc (or circumstellar disk) is a torus, pancake or ring-shaped accretion disk of matter composed of gas, dust, planetesimals, asteroids, or collision fragments in orbit around a star. Around the youngest stars, they are the res ...

Description

PDS 110 is a young star still approaching the

main sequence In astronomy, the main sequence is a classification of stars which appear on plots of stellar color index, color versus absolute magnitude, brightness as a continuous and distinctive band. Stars on this band are known as main-sequence stars or d ...

. It has been classified as a

T Tauri star T Tauri stars (TTS) are a class of variable stars that are less than about ten million years old. This class is named after the prototype, T Tauri, a young star in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, Taurus star-forming region. They are found near mo ...

, or as a pre-main sequence star. The

emission line A spectral line is a weaker or stronger region in an otherwise uniform and continuous spectrum. It may result from emission or absorption of light in a narrow frequency range, compared with the nearby frequencies. Spectral lines are often used ...

s indicative of a T Tauri classification are somewhat weaker than a typical T Tauri star, interpreted as a post-T Tauri stage. PDS 110 hosts a

2008-2011 eclipses

Brightness measurements from

SuperWASP WASP or Wide Angle Search for Planets is an international consortium of several academic organisations performing an ultra-wide angle search for exoplanets using transit photometry. The array of robotic telescopes aims to survey the entire sky ...

and

KELT KELT may refer to: *A Salmonid that has spawned at least once and did not die afterwards *An alternative spelling of Celt * KELT (FM), call letters of an FM radio station located in Encinal, Texas * KELT, the former call letters of an FM radio stat ...

showed two similar reductions in brightness in November 2008 and January 2011, both with a maximal luminosity reduction of 30% and a duration of 25 days. These events were interpreted as

transit Transit may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Transit'' (1980 film), a 1980 Israeli film * ''Transit'' (1986 film), a Canadian short film * ''Transit'' (2005 film), a film produced by MTV and Staying-Alive about four people in countrie ...

s of a structure with a period of 808 ± 2 days, corresponding to an orbital distance of about 2 AU. The large reduction in brightness could have happened due to a planet or

brown dwarf Brown dwarfs are substellar objects that have more mass than the biggest gas giant planets, but less than the least massive main sequence, main-sequence stars. Their mass is approximately 13 to 80 Jupiter mass, times that of Jupiter ()not big en ...

with a circum-secondary disk of dust with a radius of 0.3 AU around a central object with a mass between 1.8 and 70 times the mass of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

. Another transit was predicted for September 2017, but nothing similar to the previous events was seen, ruling out a periodic event.PDS 110 Observing Campaign
- Monitoring the potential September 2017 eclipse of young star PDS 110. A search of 50 years of archival data also did not find any similar eclipses. The eclipses may have been caused by dust around PDS 110 itself. Larger-scale aperiodic dimmings have been observed as UX Orionis variables, and PDS 110 may be similar. An independent 2021 study, assuming that the eclipses were caused by a ringed object in orbit around the star, attempted to constrain the properties of such an object, with their preferred solution being a brown dwarf on a nearly circular orbit. However, this does not explain the fact that no eclipse was observed in 2017.

References

External links

Giant ringed planet likely cause of mysterious stellar eclipses
{{Stars of Orion Orion (constellation) 290380 J05233100-0104237 F-type subgiants Pre-main-sequence stars IRAS catalogue objects

Description

2008-2011 eclipses

See also

References

External links