Cosmic Hamburger Disk Reveals Birthplace of Distant Giant Planets

Astronomers using ALMA have imaged Gomez’s Hamburger (GoHam), one of the largest edge-on protoplanetary disks, finding a stratified arrangement of gas and dust and signs of ongoing planet formation, including a potential giant-planet core or clump dubbed GoHam b in the outer disk. The disk’s sheer size and uneven features—such as a bright, lopsided region and a northern wind—make it an ideal laboratory to study how giant planets can form far from their star and how such planets shape their surroundings.