Hubble's Dracula's Chivito Is the Largest Planet-Forming Disk Ever Observed, Spanning 40 Times the Solar System and 10 to 30 Jupiter Masses
NASA's Hubble has imaged IRAS 23077+6707, a protoplanetary disk nicknamed Dracula's Chivito that spans nearly 400 billion miles and shows asymmetric filaments unlike any disk seen before.
Overview
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has imaged what the agency describes as the largest planet-forming disk ever observed around a young star, a chaotic, edge-on structure cataloged as IRAS 23077+6707 and nicknamed Dracula’s Chivito. The system, located approximately 1,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus, spans nearly 400 billion miles — about 40 times the diameter of our solar system out to the Kuiper Belt, according to NASA.
The imagery was first released in late 2025 alongside a paper in The Astrophysical Journal, and was republished on May 12, 2026 by NASA’s Hubble Mission Team as part of a renewed feature on the system, drawing fresh coverage of a disk that researchers say behaves unlike any comparable object previously imaged.
What We Know
The lead authors of the study are Kristina Monsch and Joshua Bennett Lovell of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, according to NASA. The team estimates the disk’s mass at 10 to 30 times that of Jupiter, enough material to feed the formation of multiple giant planets.
Viewed edge-on from Earth, the structure resembles a hamburger, with a dark, dusty central disk flanked by glowing layers of gas and dust above and below, as described in NASA’s image caption. What sets the system apart, however, is its lopsided appearance: Hubble revealed bright wisps of material extending far above and below the disk — more than seen in any similar circumstellar disk, NASA said — with filament-like features visible chiefly on one side.
“The level of detail we’re seeing is rare in protoplanetary disk imaging,” Monsch said in a NASA release. Lovell added that the team was “stunned to see how asymmetric this disk is,” according to the same release. Monsch said the object “could host a vast planetary system” if it goes on to form planets.
The Hubble observations were taken with the Wide Field Camera 3, using its UVIS and infrared channels, on February 8, 2025. The image field spans about 50 arcseconds — roughly 0.24 light-years at the system’s distance — and was assembled from six broadband filters, per the Hubble asset page.
The paper appeared in The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 996, Issue 1, page 45, with image processing credited to Joseph DePasquale of the Space Telescope Science Institute, according to Space.com.
The system’s playful nickname reflects the heritage of its observers: “Dracula” for the Transylvanian roots of one team member, and “chivito” — the national sandwich of Uruguay — for the homeland of another, as NASA explained.
What We Don’t Know
The identity of the central object remains unresolved. The star at the heart of Dracula’s Chivito may be either a single hot, massive star or a binary star system, according to phys.org’s summary of the team’s findings. The cause of the disk’s pronounced asymmetry is also undetermined; researchers have suggested that active processes such as infalling material or interactions with the surrounding environment could be responsible, but the imagery alone cannot distinguish among the candidates.
Further observations with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have been referenced for comparison work, according to NASA, but follow-up results that might resolve the central object or the source of the asymmetry have not yet been disclosed publicly. Whether the disk will ultimately produce planets — and how many — remains a question for future modeling and observations.
Context
Protoplanetary disks are the raw material of planetary systems; our own solar system formed from such a disk roughly 4.6 billion years ago, and most known disks are smaller and far more symmetric than Dracula’s Chivito. The 400-billion-mile span and 10–30 Jupiter-mass estimate place IRAS 23077+6707 among the most extreme protoplanetary environments ever imaged, offering a rare opportunity to study planet formation outside the comparatively orderly regimes seen in nearby star-forming regions.