Dusty Star

At first glance, this looks like a picture of a yo-yo or perhaps an ice cream sandwich. Instead, though, it is a disk of dust around IM Lupi, a young star in the constellation Lupus, the wolf. The star is still in the process of forming, so it's still surrounded by the cocoon of gas and dust from which it is being born. The disk of dust may be giving birth to planets. The image was obtained with a new instrument at the European Southern Observatory, and shows the disk in far greater detail than ever before. [ESO/H. Avenhaus et al./DARTT-S Collaboration]