Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2024

44 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024 ASTRO PUBLISHING by ESO Bárbara Ferreira I n a remarkable discovery, as- tronomers have found a disc around a young star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy neigh- bouring ours. It’s the first time such a disc, identical to those forming planets in our own Milky Way, has ever been found outside our galaxy. The new observations reveal a mas- sive young star, growing and accret- ing matter from its surroundings and forming a rotating disc. The de- tection was made using the Ata- cama Large Millimeter/submillim- eter Array (ALMA) in Chile, in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner. Circumstellar disk discovered for the first time in another galaxy