Astronomers have captured an exceptionally detailed view of a massive binary star system while it is still forming. By monitoring two young massive stars over nearly eight years with ALMA, and combining the observations with data from the VLA, JWST and VLT, the team reconstructed the system’s three-dimensional orbital motion, gas disks and jets.
The observations reveal a highly eccentric orbit and strongly misaligned disks, suggesting that the two stars may have formed independently before coming together during a close gravitational encounter. This challenges the common picture in which massive binary stars form together from a single rotating disk.
The study demonstrates how long-term, high-precision observations across radio and infrared wavelengths can provide new insights into how massive binary systems assemble.
Read more: ALMA press release | Nature Astronomy
Image Credit: An artist’s impression of the formation of a close massive binary system, showing misaligned disks around two young stars. Credit: Y. Zhang