Hubble spies vast gas disk around unique massive star

This visible-light image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveals a pancake-shaped disk of gas around an extremely bright star in our Milky Way galaxy. The disk glows brightly in the light of ionized nitrogen. 

NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

The bizarre case of the dusty disk disappeared

At about 450 light years from Earth, towards the southern constellation of Centaurus, there is a solar-type star with a name similar to a taxpayer number: TYC 8241 2652 1. Since 1983, thanks to  observations from NASA's IRAS infrared satellite, we knew that a warm disk of dust was orbiting around the ten million years old star: a kind of space coat, able to transform into infrared radiation, i.e. heat, the light received from the young star.

Artist's conceptualization of the dusty TYC 8241 2652 system as it might have appeared several years ago when it was emitting large amounts of excess infrared radiation. Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA artwork by Lynette Cook