Big cosmic ‘sandwich’ is the most important planet-forming disk ever seen — Area picture of the week

The Hubble Area Telescope has captured a spectacular new picture of the most important and most uncommon protoplanetary disk ever noticed round a single star. The thing, formally referred to as IRAS 23077+6707 and nicknamed “Dracula’s Chivito,” is a dusty disk that resembles a sandwich.

Wealthy in fuel and mud, a protoplanetary disk is the place planets — each rocky worlds, like Earth, and fuel giants, like Jupiter — can kind round younger stars. Dracula’s Chivito may, in concept, comprise an unlimited planetary system. Its title references each its look and its discoverers, who come from Transylvania, Romania (residence of the fictional Dracula), and Uruguay, the place the nationwide dish is the chivito, a sandwich of sliced beef, ham, mozzarella, tomatoes and olives — which resembles the layers of fuel and mud within the protoplanetary disk.