Hubble’s Album of Planet-Forming Disks
This collection of new images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows protoplanetary disks, the swirling masses of gas and dust that surround forming stars, in visible and infrared wavelengths. By observing young stellar objects like these, Hubble helps scientists better understand how stars form.
These visible light images depict dark dust disks forming planets around a hidden developing star, called a protostar. Fast-moving bipolar jets of gas, traveling at about 150 km per second, erupt from both ends of the protostar. The top two images are of protostars found about 450 light-years away in the Taurus molecular cloud, while the bottom two images are almost 500 light-years away in the Chameleon I star-forming region.
Stars form from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. As the surrounding gas and dust falls toward the protostar, some of it forms a rotating disk around the star that continues to feed the growing object. Planets form from the remaining gas and dust orbiting the star. The bright yellow regions above and below the rotating disks are reflection nebulae, gas and dust illuminated by starlight.
Jets emitted by the magnetic poles of stars play an important role in their formation process. The jets, channeled by the powerful magnetic fields of the protostar, disperse the angular momentum, due to the rotational movement of the object. This allows the protostar to rotate slowly enough for material to accumulate. In the images, some jets appear to be widening. This happens when the fast jet collides with the surrounding gas and causes it to glow, an effect called shock emission.
These front views of protostars in infrared light also reveal thick, dusty protoplanetary disks. The dark areas may look like very large disks, but they are actually much larger shadows cast into the surrounding envelope by the central disks. The bright haze throughout the image comes from light scattering by dust grains in the surrounding cloud. The stars in the upper right and lower left reside in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, about 1,300 light years away, and the stars in the upper left and lower right reside in the Perseus Molecular Cloud, about 1,500 light years away.
In its early stages, these disks tap into the dust that remains around forming stars. Unlike visible light, infrared light can pass through this “protostellar envelope”. The protostars in the images visible above are further along in their evolution, much of the dusty envelope has dissipated. Otherwise, they could not be seen in visible wavelengths.
Observed in infrared light, the central star is visible through the thick dust of protoplanetary disks. Bipolar jets are also present but not visible because the hot gas emission is not strong enough for Hubble to detect.
HOPS 150 above right is actually in a binary system, orbiting another young protostar. The companion to the HOPS 150, HOPS 153, is not shown in this image.
From a broader Hubble study of Orion’s protostars, including HOPS 150 and HOPS 367, astronomers found that regions with higher star density tend to have more companion stars. They also found a similar number of companions between the main sequence (active hydrogen-fusing stars) and their younger counterparts.
New images added every day between January 12 and 17, 2026! Follow @NASAHubble on social media for the latest Hubble images and news, and check out Hubble’s Star Building Zones for more images of young stellar objects.
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Media contact:
Claire Andreoli
from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
