Astronomers witness the birth of a massive binary star system.
Observations of a massive spiralling cloud of gas and dust have given a team of astronomers from across the globe a glimpse at how binary systems form.
Astronomers have made observations of a molecular cloud that is collapsing to form two massive protostars that will eventually become a binary star system.
Even though scientists know that most massive stars possess orbiting stellar companions it has been unclear how this comes about — are the stars born together from a common spiralling gas disk at the centre of a collapsing cloud, or do they pair up later by chance encounters in a crowded star cluster?
Understanding the dynamics of forming binaries has been difficult because the protostars in these systems are still enveloped in a thick cloud of gas and dust that prevents light they emit from reaching us. Fortunately, it is possible to see them using radio waves, as long as they can be imaged with sufficiently high spatial resolution.