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The star, designated HH 1177, has at least 12 times the mass of the Sun and is more than 160,000 light-years away. In 2019, it was found to have a 33 light-year-long jet, a sign of its ongoing mass accretion, but the existence of an accretion disc has yet to be confirmed.
“We know that matter attracted to a growing star does not fall on it ‘in a straight line’ but forms a flattened rotating disc. Closer to the centre of the disc, matter moves faster than at the periphery, and this difference in velocity that we have identified in the data is irrefutable evidence for the presence of an accretion disk,” the authors of the discovery explained.
