Artist’s Impression of Protoplanetary Discs Around Young Stars HK Tauri A and B

This artist’s impression shows a striking pair of wildly misaligned planet-forming gas discs around both the young stars in the binary system HK Tauri. ALMA observations of this system have provided the clearest picture ever of protoplanetary discs in a double star. The new result demonstrates one possible way to explain why so many exoplanets — unlike the planets in the Solar System — came to have strange, eccentric or inclined orbits.

Illustration credit: R. Hurt (NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC)

Note: For more information, see ALMA Finds Double Star with Weird and Wild Planet-Forming Discs