Could New Planets Form Around Old Stars, Too? (Video, Images)

The newly released image, which was captured by the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in Chile, shows a dusty disk around an old double star called IRAS 08544-4431, which lies about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails). "Our observations and modeling open a new window to study the physics of these disks, as well as stellar evolution in double stars," study co-author Hans Van Winckel, of the Instituut voor Sterrenkunde in Belgium, said