NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a curious cosmic feature that has drawn an equally unusual name—“Dracula’s Chivito”—representing, for the first time, the largestprotoplanetary disk ever seen around a young star in visible light.
With the disk’s appearance in the image reminiscent of a film special effect, its nickname as “Dracula’s Chivito” is well earned. Furthermore, the image shows the disk is chaotic and turbulent, consistent with its namesake, as evidenced by wisps extending from its top and bottom.
Dracula’s Chivito Explained
The technical designation for Dracula’s Chivito is IRAS 23077+6707, a 400 billion-mile-wide disk 1,000 light-years from Earth. Astronomers revealed their findings on the disk and its protrusion in a recent article published in The Astrophysical Journal. These wisps of material protruding from the disk’s edges are much longer than anything previously seen to emanate from a protoplanetary disk in a similar system.
From its location in the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt, the disk provides new insight into how exoplanets can form in extreme environments. IRAS 23077+6707 is extremely large, with a diameter 40 times that of our solar system. Because the disk obscures the center of the system, astronomers cannot obtain a clear view to determine whether it contains a hot young star or a pair of stars. The disk’s size is not the only unusual thing about it, though.
“The level of detail we’re seeing is rare in protoplanetary disk imaging, and these new Hubble images show that planet nurseries can be much more active and chaotic than we expected,” said lead author Kristina Monsch of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA). “We’re seeing this disk nearly edge-on and its wispy upper layers and asymmetric features are especially striking.”
Strange Protrusions
The long wisps occur only on one side of the disk, the other having a sharp edge. Astronomers suggest this indicates recent dynamic processes that produce the filaments, possibly dust or gas infall or other interactions with their surroundings.
“We were stunned to see how asymmetric this disk is,” said co-author Joshua Bennett Lovell, also an astronomer at the CfA. “Hubble has given us a front row seat to the chaotic processes that are shaping disks as they build new planets — processes that we don’t yet fully understand but can now study in a whole new way.”
“Both Hubble and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have glimpsed similar structures in other disks, but IRAS 23077+6707 provides us with an exceptional perspective — allowing us to trace its substructures in visible light at an unprecedented level of detail,” Monsch added. “This makes the system a unique, new laboratory for studying planet formation and the environments where it happens.”
Naming and Further Research
Ironically, the origin of the team’s nickname for IRAS 23077+6707 is rooted in much lighter elements than its eerie appearance and chaotic nature. Instead, the team noted the disk’s resemblance to a sandwich with a dark center, surrounded by a glowing top and bottom. The name comes from Uruguay’s national dish, the chivito sandwich. Since one of the researchers is from Uruguay, they decided to combine the sandwich with a national figure from the home of another team member: Transylvania.
Despite its silly name, IRAS 23077+6707 is a powerful force in the cosmos. Protoplanetary disks consist of gas and dust surrounding a young star and either form planets or continue to fuel the star. The team believes that Dracula’s Chivito is like an upscaled version of our own early solar system, with enough raw material to form many gas giants. Continued research of the disk will illuminate how our own and other solar systems came to be.
“In theory, IRAS 23077+6707 could host a vast planetary system,” said Monsch. “While planet formation may differ in such massive environments, the underlying processes are likely similar.”
“Right now, we have more questions than answers,” Monsch added, “but these new images are a starting point for understanding how planets form over time and in different environments.”
The paper, “Hubble Reveals Complex Multiscale Structure in the Edge-on Protoplanetary Disk IRAS23077+6707,” appeared in The Astrophysical Journal on December 23, 2025.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.