Astronomers Watch a Multiple-Star System Being Born for the First Time

Astronomers are witnessing the birth of a star system. This week, scientists have reported the first multiple-star system to be observed during the earliest stages of formation, revealing a bit more about the evolution of these systems.

Understanding how multiple star systems form is crucial for understanding both star and planet formation. The number of stars is determined during the earliest stage of star formation, but critical processes occurring then are usually hidden by dense clouds of dust and gas. Now, though, researchers are getting a glimpse of this early history of multiple-star systems.

Up to half of all stars reside in systems with two or more stars, including the sun's nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri. However, astronomers don't know exactly what determines how many stars will form together or what initial conditions determine the type of star system to develop.

The new observations actually help explain why some pre-stellar gas condensations go on to form a system with only a single star, while others form binary or multi-star systems.  The researchers found the star system in the act of forming within the "stellar nursery" region of the constellation Perseus has three gas condensations, which are fragments of dense gas filament. They also found one very young star that's still gaining mass. In theory, these condensations will each form a star in about 40,000 years.

The gravitational attraction between these forming stars will likely be strong enough that the new stars will create a quadruple star system. This shows how a multi-star system forms in contrast to a single star system.

"In terms of what this means for the formation of our sun, it suggests that its early conditions did not look like this forming system," said Stella Offner, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Instead, the sun likely formed form something that was more spherical than filamentary. The distribution of the planets in our solar system also suggests that our sun was never part of a multiple system like this one."

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

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