TW Hydrae

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TW Hydrae is the nearest classical T Tauri star to the Sun, situated some 56 parsecs away in the constellation Hydra. TW Hydrae is similar in mass to the Sun, but is only about 10 million years old. The star appears to be accreting from a face-on protoplanetary disk of dust and gas, which has been resolved in images from the Hubble Space Telescope. TW Hydrae is accompanied by about twenty other low-mass stars with similar ages and space motions, comprising the "TW Hydrae association" or TWA, one of the closest regions of recent "fossil" star-formation to the Sun.