Dracula’s Chivito, also known as IRAS 23077+6707, is the largest known disk of its kind. It was discovered during a study of active galactic nucleus candidates using images from the Pan-STARRS research project. This edge-on disk completely obscures its central star and is associated with an infrared light source in the same region of the sky. The disk spans approximately 11 arcseconds in apparent size, with a faint structure extending out to about 17 arcseconds in the northern part, giving it a resemblance to a sandwich with fang-like structures. This similarity, along with its association with the infrared source IRAS 23077+6707, earned it the nickname “Dracula’s Chivito” (chivito being a type of sandwich from Uruguay).
The protoplanetary disk surrounds a young star about twice the size of our sun, and the system isn’t located near any known star-forming regions. Analysis suggests it’s a young system at the end of a developmental phase. It has faint “fangs” in the north that might be a dissipating envelope, further supporting its youth.
The discovery of Dracula’s Chivito is significant because it confirms the existence of an entirely new type of object, previously seen only once before in the “Gomez’s Hamburger” nebula. Initially thought to be a nebula, Gomez’s Hamburger was later revealed to be a protoplanetary disk similar to Dracula’s Chivito, but much hotter and more evolved.
References:
A Vampire’s Sandwich Filled with Gas and Dust
Authors: Ciprian T. Berghea et al.
First Author’s Institution: US Naval Observatory
Status: Published in ApJL
Strange Object Described as Dracula’s Sandwich Could Represent a New Kind of Baby Star
Dracula’s Chivito: discovery of a large edge-on protoplanetary disk with Pan-STARRS
Ciprian T. Berghea, Ammar Bayyari, Michael L. Sitko, Jeremy J. Drake, Ana Mosquera, Cecilia Garraffo, Thomas Petit, Ray W. Russell, Korash D. Assani
| Comments: | 11 pages, 4 figures, accepted in ApJL |
| Subjects: | Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2402.01063 [astro-ph.SR] |
| (or arXiv:2402.01063v2 [astro-ph.SR] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2402.01063 |
https://arxiv.org/html/2402.01063v1
The infrared emission bands. III. Southern IRAS sources
M Cohen 1, A G Tielens, J Bregman, F C Witteborn, D M Rank, L J Allamandola, D H Wooden, M de Muizon
Collaborators, Affiliations expand
- PMID: 11542167
- DOI: 10.1086/167489
Circular Astronomy 