Hubble Captures Sharpest Image Yet of Dusty Disk Surrounding Beta Pictoris
Source: Science World Report
Hubble Captures Sharpest Image Yet of Dusty Disk Surrounding Beta Pictoris
Catherine Griffin
First Posted: Feb 23, 2015 06:57 AM EST
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken the most detailed picture yet of a large, edge-one, dusty disk encircling the 20-million-year-old star, Beta Pictoris. The new image reveals a bit more about this star and the disk that surrounds it.
Beta Pictoris remains the only directly imaged debris disk that has a giant planet. Because the orbital period is comparatively sort at 18 to 22 years, astronomers can see large motion in just a few years. This, in turn, gives astronomers the opportunity to see how the Beta Pictoris disk is distorted by the presence of a massive planet embedded within the disk.
"Some computer simulations predicted a complicated structure for the inner disk due to the gravitational pull by the short-period giant plant," said Daniel Apai, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The new images reveal the inner disk and confirm the predicted structures. This finding validates models, which will help us to deduce the presence of other exoplanets in other disks."
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Read more: http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/22617/20150223/hubble-captures-sharpest-image-dusty-disk-surrounding-beta-pictoris.htm
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Here's the image.
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