Pub Date : 2025-10-21DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02683-8
Jing Wen, Bingqiu Chen, Jian Gao, Jun Li, Ming Yang, Biwei Jiang
Stars form in molecular clouds under the influence of their local environments, yet the role of massive stellar feedback in either triggering or suppressing star formation remains a fundamental question in astrophysics. The Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula—sculpted by ionizing radiation and stellar winds from massive stars in NGC 6611—offer a natural laboratory for investigating this question. Here we present high-resolution observations of the Pillars of Creation using the JWST Near Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument, revealing 253 young stellar object (YSO) candidates. These YSO candidates show spatial correlations with the edges of feedback-driven structures, with overdensities along the boundaries. A weak trend of decreasing stellar age with increasing distance from the ionizing source was tentatively observed. There also appears to be an enhancement in the star formation rate within the past 1 Myr in this region. Such age and spatial associations suggest that while the bulk of the YSOs may have formed contemporaneously with the central cluster, a subset could be associated with triggered star formation. The JWST image of intricate structures—including a spiral-like disk and bi-reflection nebulae at the tips of Pillar I and Pillar II—further highlights the complexity of star formation processes. JWST reveals 253 YSO candidates in the Pillars of Creation, concentrated along the pillar edges with tentative age gradients and an enhanced star formation rate within 1 Myr. These findings suggest that some may have formed via triggered star formation.
{"title":"Evidence of triggered star formation in the Pillars of Creation from JWST observations","authors":"Jing Wen, Bingqiu Chen, Jian Gao, Jun Li, Ming Yang, Biwei Jiang","doi":"10.1038/s41550-025-02683-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41550-025-02683-8","url":null,"abstract":"Stars form in molecular clouds under the influence of their local environments, yet the role of massive stellar feedback in either triggering or suppressing star formation remains a fundamental question in astrophysics. The Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula—sculpted by ionizing radiation and stellar winds from massive stars in NGC 6611—offer a natural laboratory for investigating this question. Here we present high-resolution observations of the Pillars of Creation using the JWST Near Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument, revealing 253 young stellar object (YSO) candidates. These YSO candidates show spatial correlations with the edges of feedback-driven structures, with overdensities along the boundaries. A weak trend of decreasing stellar age with increasing distance from the ionizing source was tentatively observed. There also appears to be an enhancement in the star formation rate within the past 1 Myr in this region. Such age and spatial associations suggest that while the bulk of the YSOs may have formed contemporaneously with the central cluster, a subset could be associated with triggered star formation. The JWST image of intricate structures—including a spiral-like disk and bi-reflection nebulae at the tips of Pillar I and Pillar II—further highlights the complexity of star formation processes. JWST reveals 253 YSO candidates in the Pillars of Creation, concentrated along the pillar edges with tentative age gradients and an enhanced star formation rate within 1 Myr. These findings suggest that some may have formed via triggered star formation.","PeriodicalId":18778,"journal":{"name":"Nature Astronomy","volume":"9 12","pages":"1845-1853"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145382420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-17DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02684-7
Jennifer DeWitt, Anita Heward, Nigel J. Mason
Measuring the impact or the ‘value-for-money’ of a research infrastructure can be challenging, but here lessons from Europlanet demonstrate the worth of embedding an Impact Evaluation Officer within the project to document returns beyond the standard evaluation metrics.
{"title":"Insights into evaluating a research project through an impact case study of a pan-European research infrastructure","authors":"Jennifer DeWitt, Anita Heward, Nigel J. Mason","doi":"10.1038/s41550-025-02684-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41550-025-02684-7","url":null,"abstract":"Measuring the impact or the ‘value-for-money’ of a research infrastructure can be challenging, but here lessons from Europlanet demonstrate the worth of embedding an Impact Evaluation Officer within the project to document returns beyond the standard evaluation metrics.","PeriodicalId":18778,"journal":{"name":"Nature Astronomy","volume":"9 10","pages":"1415-1417"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145317885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-17DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02681-w
Bokyoung Kim
Eugene Vasiliev started developing Agama to support both personal research and the growing needs of the stellar and galactic dynamics community. Looking ahead, Agama is set to become an all-rounder for dynamical modelling.
{"title":"Agama","authors":"Bokyoung Kim","doi":"10.1038/s41550-025-02681-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41550-025-02681-w","url":null,"abstract":"Eugene Vasiliev started developing Agama to support both personal research and the growing needs of the stellar and galactic dynamics community. Looking ahead, Agama is set to become an all-rounder for dynamical modelling.","PeriodicalId":18778,"journal":{"name":"Nature Astronomy","volume":"9 10","pages":"1579-1579"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145317881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-17DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02701-9
The importance of small bodies in Solar System studies is not proportional to their size. Due to their variety of types, scope, and link to Solar System formation, they are one of the most active fields in planetary science.
{"title":"Big realities for small bodies","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41550-025-02701-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41550-025-02701-9","url":null,"abstract":"The importance of small bodies in Solar System studies is not proportional to their size. Due to their variety of types, scope, and link to Solar System formation, they are one of the most active fields in planetary science.","PeriodicalId":18778,"journal":{"name":"Nature Astronomy","volume":"9 10","pages":"1407-1407"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02701-9.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145317888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-15DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02686-5
Aleksey Generozov, Stella S. R. Offner, Kaitlin M. Kratter, Hagai B. Perets, Dávid Guszejnov, Michael Y. Grudić
Most main sequence stars, unlike our Sun, belong to multiple systems containing two or more stars. How and when these multiples come together and become bound is uncertain, as the earliest stages of star formation are difficult to resolve. Here we analyse simulations of star cluster formation in Milky Way-like conditions, including all key physics and stellar feedback mechanisms, to understand how multiple systems form. We show that ~70–80% of binaries are gravitationally bound from the moment the second star forms. Binaries evolve and accrete together, which will affect their planetary systems and chemical evolution. Half of the binaries are disrupted by the end of the star-formation epoch, such that ~40% of the final single stars belonged to a multiple at some point, with implications for the stellar initial mass function. Formation in multiples is the dominant mode of star formation, accounting for at least 57% of stars. Simulations of Milky Way-like star clusters show that most (>57%) stars form in multiples. Approximately 75% of binaries are gravitationally bound from the birth of the secondary, and ~40% of (eventual) single stars originated in a multiple system.
{"title":"The bound origin of low-mass stellar binaries","authors":"Aleksey Generozov, Stella S. R. Offner, Kaitlin M. Kratter, Hagai B. Perets, Dávid Guszejnov, Michael Y. Grudić","doi":"10.1038/s41550-025-02686-5","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41550-025-02686-5","url":null,"abstract":"Most main sequence stars, unlike our Sun, belong to multiple systems containing two or more stars. How and when these multiples come together and become bound is uncertain, as the earliest stages of star formation are difficult to resolve. Here we analyse simulations of star cluster formation in Milky Way-like conditions, including all key physics and stellar feedback mechanisms, to understand how multiple systems form. We show that ~70–80% of binaries are gravitationally bound from the moment the second star forms. Binaries evolve and accrete together, which will affect their planetary systems and chemical evolution. Half of the binaries are disrupted by the end of the star-formation epoch, such that ~40% of the final single stars belonged to a multiple at some point, with implications for the stellar initial mass function. Formation in multiples is the dominant mode of star formation, accounting for at least 57% of stars. Simulations of Milky Way-like star clusters show that most (>57%) stars form in multiples. Approximately 75% of binaries are gravitationally bound from the birth of the secondary, and ~40% of (eventual) single stars originated in a multiple system.","PeriodicalId":18778,"journal":{"name":"Nature Astronomy","volume":"9 12","pages":"1860-1868"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145382411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-15DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02663-y
Margot Leemker, John J. Tobin, Stefano Facchini, Pietro Curone, Alice S. Booth, Kenji Furuya, Merel L. R. van ’t Hoff
Water is essential to our understanding of the planet-formation process and habitability on Earth. Although trace amounts of water are seen across all phases of star and planet formation, the bulk of the water reservoir often goes undetected, hiding crucial parts of its journey from giant molecular clouds to planets. This raises the question of whether water molecules in comets and (exo-)planets is largely inherited from the interstellar medium or whether the water molecules are destroyed and then reformed in the disk. Water isotopologue ratios involving doubly deuterated water (D2O) are a sensitive tracer to answer this question. Here we present strong evidence of inheritance through an enhancement of D2O in the outbursting V883 Ori disk. The high D2O/H2O ratio of (3.2 ± 1.2) × 10−5 is consistent with values seen in protostellar envelopes and a comet and is 2 orders of magnitude higher than expected if water is reprocessed. The high deuteration of the heaviest isotopologues D2O/HDO = (2.3 ± 1.0) × HDO/H2O further establishes the inheritance of water. We conclude that water ice in disks originates from the earliest phases of star formation, providing the missing link between cold dark clouds and (exo-)comets. The origin of water is one biggest unknowns in the field of star and planet formation: is it inherited or created in situ? Through the detection of heavy water (D2O) in a protoplanetary disk, it is shown that this water must be older than the central star.
{"title":"Pristine ices in a planet-forming disk revealed by heavy water","authors":"Margot Leemker, John J. Tobin, Stefano Facchini, Pietro Curone, Alice S. Booth, Kenji Furuya, Merel L. R. van ’t Hoff","doi":"10.1038/s41550-025-02663-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41550-025-02663-y","url":null,"abstract":"Water is essential to our understanding of the planet-formation process and habitability on Earth. Although trace amounts of water are seen across all phases of star and planet formation, the bulk of the water reservoir often goes undetected, hiding crucial parts of its journey from giant molecular clouds to planets. This raises the question of whether water molecules in comets and (exo-)planets is largely inherited from the interstellar medium or whether the water molecules are destroyed and then reformed in the disk. Water isotopologue ratios involving doubly deuterated water (D2O) are a sensitive tracer to answer this question. Here we present strong evidence of inheritance through an enhancement of D2O in the outbursting V883 Ori disk. The high D2O/H2O ratio of (3.2 ± 1.2) × 10−5 is consistent with values seen in protostellar envelopes and a comet and is 2 orders of magnitude higher than expected if water is reprocessed. The high deuteration of the heaviest isotopologues D2O/HDO = (2.3 ± 1.0) × HDO/H2O further establishes the inheritance of water. We conclude that water ice in disks originates from the earliest phases of star formation, providing the missing link between cold dark clouds and (exo-)comets. The origin of water is one biggest unknowns in the field of star and planet formation: is it inherited or created in situ? Through the detection of heavy water (D2O) in a protoplanetary disk, it is shown that this water must be older than the central star.","PeriodicalId":18778,"journal":{"name":"Nature Astronomy","volume":"9 10","pages":"1486-1494"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02663-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145317887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-10DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02675-8
Patrick Slane, Ákos Bogdán, David Pooley
The Chandra X-ray Observatory is a mainstay of modern observational astrophysics. With the highest angular resolution of any X-ray facility, its imaging and spectral capabilities in the 0.5–10 keV band have led to both unique and complementary breakthroughs in nearly all areas of the field. Now, more than a quarter of a century into its mission, Chandra continues to provide invaluable information on the contributions of compact objects to the evolution of galaxies, the nature of supernova explosions, the impact of energetic jets from supermassive black holes on their host environments and the fate of exoplanet atmospheres in systems rich with stellar flares. Here we provide a summary of Chandra results—one that is embarrassingly incomplete, but representative of both the exquisite past and promising future of Chandra’s contributions to high-energy astrophysics and all of mainstream astronomy. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has provided a high-energy view of objects and processes throughout the Universe. This Review discusses many of the key results from Chandra’s 25 years of data.
{"title":"25 years of groundbreaking discoveries with Chandra","authors":"Patrick Slane, Ákos Bogdán, David Pooley","doi":"10.1038/s41550-025-02675-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41550-025-02675-8","url":null,"abstract":"The Chandra X-ray Observatory is a mainstay of modern observational astrophysics. With the highest angular resolution of any X-ray facility, its imaging and spectral capabilities in the 0.5–10 keV band have led to both unique and complementary breakthroughs in nearly all areas of the field. Now, more than a quarter of a century into its mission, Chandra continues to provide invaluable information on the contributions of compact objects to the evolution of galaxies, the nature of supernova explosions, the impact of energetic jets from supermassive black holes on their host environments and the fate of exoplanet atmospheres in systems rich with stellar flares. Here we provide a summary of Chandra results—one that is embarrassingly incomplete, but representative of both the exquisite past and promising future of Chandra’s contributions to high-energy astrophysics and all of mainstream astronomy. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has provided a high-energy view of objects and processes throughout the Universe. This Review discusses many of the key results from Chandra’s 25 years of data.","PeriodicalId":18778,"journal":{"name":"Nature Astronomy","volume":"9 10","pages":"1431-1443"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145317880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-10DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02667-8
JWST has spatially resolved ro-vibrational CO emission excited by fluorescence in the 49 Ceti debris disk. These observations provide insight into the nature and origin of gas in debris disks.
{"title":"JWST spatially resolved fluorescently excited CO emission in a debris disk","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41550-025-02667-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41550-025-02667-8","url":null,"abstract":"JWST has spatially resolved ro-vibrational CO emission excited by fluorescence in the 49 Ceti debris disk. These observations provide insight into the nature and origin of gas in debris disks.","PeriodicalId":18778,"journal":{"name":"Nature Astronomy","volume":"9 11","pages":"1611-1612"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145381798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-09DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02651-2
D. M. Powell, J. P. McKean, S. Vegetti, C. Spingola, S. D. M. White, C. D. Fassnacht
Structure on subgalactic scales provides important tests of galaxy formation models and the nature of dark matter. However, such objects are typically too faint to provide robust mass constraints. Here we report the discovery of an extremely low-mass object detected by means of its gravitational perturbation to a thin lensed arc observed with milli-arcsecond-resolution very long baseline interferometry. The object was identified using a non-parametric gravitational imaging technique and confirmed using independent parametric modelling. It contains a mass of m80 = (1.13 ± 0.04) × 106 M⊙ within a projected radius of 80 pc at an assumed redshift of 0.881. This detection is extremely robust and precise, with a statistical significance of 26σ, a 3.3% fractional uncertainty on m80 and an astrometric uncertainty of 194 μas. This is the lowest-mass object known to us, by two orders of magnitude, to be detected at a cosmological distance by its gravitational effect. This work demonstrates the observational feasibility of using gravitational imaging to probe the million-solar-mass regime far beyond our local Universe. Perturbations to strongly lensed galaxy light in very long baseline interferometric imaging reveal a dark and unusually low-mass object at redshift z ≈ 0.9.
{"title":"A million-solar-mass object detected at a cosmological distance using gravitational imaging","authors":"D. M. Powell, J. P. McKean, S. Vegetti, C. Spingola, S. D. M. White, C. D. Fassnacht","doi":"10.1038/s41550-025-02651-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41550-025-02651-2","url":null,"abstract":"Structure on subgalactic scales provides important tests of galaxy formation models and the nature of dark matter. However, such objects are typically too faint to provide robust mass constraints. Here we report the discovery of an extremely low-mass object detected by means of its gravitational perturbation to a thin lensed arc observed with milli-arcsecond-resolution very long baseline interferometry. The object was identified using a non-parametric gravitational imaging technique and confirmed using independent parametric modelling. It contains a mass of m80 = (1.13 ± 0.04) × 106 M⊙ within a projected radius of 80 pc at an assumed redshift of 0.881. This detection is extremely robust and precise, with a statistical significance of 26σ, a 3.3% fractional uncertainty on m80 and an astrometric uncertainty of 194 μas. This is the lowest-mass object known to us, by two orders of magnitude, to be detected at a cosmological distance by its gravitational effect. This work demonstrates the observational feasibility of using gravitational imaging to probe the million-solar-mass regime far beyond our local Universe. Perturbations to strongly lensed galaxy light in very long baseline interferometric imaging reveal a dark and unusually low-mass object at redshift z ≈ 0.9.","PeriodicalId":18778,"journal":{"name":"Nature Astronomy","volume":"9 11","pages":"1714-1722"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02651-2.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145382412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-08DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02682-9
Shanghuo Li, Henrik Beuther, André Oliva, Vardan G. Elbakyan, Stella S. R. Offner, Rolf Kuiper, Keping Qiu, Xing Lu, Patricio Sanhueza, Huei-Ru Vivien Chen, Qizhou Zhang, Fernando A. Olguin, Chang Won Lee, Ralph E. Pudritz, Shuo Kong, Rajika L. Kuruwita, Qiuyi Luo, Junhao Liu
Stellar multiple systems play a pivotal role in cluster dynamics and stellar evolution, producing intense astronomical phenomena like X-ray binaries, gamma-ray bursts, type Ia supernova and stellar mergers, which are prime sources of gravitational waves. However, their origin remains poorly understood. Here we report the discovery of a septuple protostellar system embedded in a Keplerian disk within the high-mass star-forming region NGC 6334IN, with close separations of 181–461 au. A stability analysis reveals that the disk surrounding the septuple system is dynamically unstable, indicating that the septuple system formed through disk fragmentation. Previous studies have typically found only two or three members forming through disk fragmentation in both low- and high-mass star-forming regions. Our findings provide compelling observational evidence that the fragmentation of a gravitationally unstable disk is a viable mechanism for the formation of extreme high-order multiplicity, confirming what was previously only a theoretical concept. The results shed new light on the formation of extreme high-order multiplicity in cluster environments. High-resolution ALMA observations reveal a gravitationally bound septuple protostar system in NGC 6334IN, formed through disk fragmentation. This discovery sheds light on the formation of extreme high-order multiplicity in massive stellar clusters.
{"title":"Detection of a septuple stellar system in formation via disk fragmentation","authors":"Shanghuo Li, Henrik Beuther, André Oliva, Vardan G. Elbakyan, Stella S. R. Offner, Rolf Kuiper, Keping Qiu, Xing Lu, Patricio Sanhueza, Huei-Ru Vivien Chen, Qizhou Zhang, Fernando A. Olguin, Chang Won Lee, Ralph E. Pudritz, Shuo Kong, Rajika L. Kuruwita, Qiuyi Luo, Junhao Liu","doi":"10.1038/s41550-025-02682-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41550-025-02682-9","url":null,"abstract":"Stellar multiple systems play a pivotal role in cluster dynamics and stellar evolution, producing intense astronomical phenomena like X-ray binaries, gamma-ray bursts, type Ia supernova and stellar mergers, which are prime sources of gravitational waves. However, their origin remains poorly understood. Here we report the discovery of a septuple protostellar system embedded in a Keplerian disk within the high-mass star-forming region NGC 6334IN, with close separations of 181–461 au. A stability analysis reveals that the disk surrounding the septuple system is dynamically unstable, indicating that the septuple system formed through disk fragmentation. Previous studies have typically found only two or three members forming through disk fragmentation in both low- and high-mass star-forming regions. Our findings provide compelling observational evidence that the fragmentation of a gravitationally unstable disk is a viable mechanism for the formation of extreme high-order multiplicity, confirming what was previously only a theoretical concept. The results shed new light on the formation of extreme high-order multiplicity in cluster environments. High-resolution ALMA observations reveal a gravitationally bound septuple protostar system in NGC 6334IN, formed through disk fragmentation. This discovery sheds light on the formation of extreme high-order multiplicity in massive stellar clusters.","PeriodicalId":18778,"journal":{"name":"Nature Astronomy","volume":"9 12","pages":"1833-1844"},"PeriodicalIF":14.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145381839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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