Planetary Disks Slow Stellar Rotation
Submit on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 01:04
Artist illustration of a planetary disk. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SpitzerClick to enlarge
New data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope are giving astronomers a sense of how protoplanetary disks might act as a brake to slow stellar rotation. Young stars spin very quickly, often completing a rotation in less than a day. They could spin even faster, but something is slowing them down. Spitzer gathered data on 500 young stars in the Orion Nebula. The fastest spinning stars don’t have planetary disks around then. It might be that the magnetic field of the star interacts with the planetary disk, slowing the star down.
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