WASHINGTON, July 24 (Xinhua) -- In our own solar system, it took only one star - our sun to "raise" a planet. However, new research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope released Tuesday shows that planets might sometimes form in systems with as many as four stars.

    The quadruple-star system is called HD 98800, which is still relatively young, at 10 million years old, and is located 150 light-years away in the constellation TW Hydrae.

    Before Spitzer set its gaze on HD 98800, astronomers had a rough idea of the system's structure from observations with ground-based telescopes. They knew the system contains four stars, and that the stars are paired off into doublets, or binaries. The stars in the binary pairs orbit around each other, and the two pairs also circle each other like choreographed ballerinas. One of the stellar pairs, called HD 98800B, has a disk of dust around it, while the other pair has none.

    NASA astronomers used Spitzer's infrared vision to study this dusty disk. Such disks are thought to give rise to planets. Instead of a smooth, continuous disk, the telescope detected gaps that could be caused by a unique gravitational relationship between the system's four stars. Alternatively, the gaps could indicate planets have already begun to form, carving out lanes in the dust.

    "Since many young stars form in multiple systems, we have to realize that the evolution of disks around them and the possible formation of planetary systems can be way more complicated and perturbed than in a simple case like our solar system," said NASA scientist Elise Furlan.