Wide-field view of part of the Taurus star formation region

This wide field image shows extensive dust and small clumps of star formation in part of the Taurus star formation region. A faint star at the centre of this picture is the young binary star system HK Tauri. ALMA observations of this system have provided the clearest picture ever of protoplanetary discs in a double star. The new result demonstrates one possible way to explain why so many exoplanets — unlike the planets in the Solar System — came to have strange, eccentric or inclined orbits. This picture was created from images from the Digitized Sky Survey 2.