Artistic animation of the warped and torned apart disc of GW Orionis

A team of astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the VLT Interferometer and ALMA, in which ESO is a partner, have studied GW Orionis, a triple star system with a peculiar inner region. Unlike the flat planet-forming discs we see around many stars, GW Orionis features a warped disc, deformed by the movements of the three stars at its centre. This animation allows the viewer to see the warped disc and the tilted ring that was torned apart from it in spectacular detail. The animation is based on a