Hubble Captures Sharpest Image Yet of Dusty Disk Surrounding Beta Pictoris

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken the most detailed picture yet of a large, edge-on, 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 short 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."

So what's changed since the last time the astronomers imaged the disk? It appears that the dust distribution as barely changed over 15 years, despite the fact that the entire structure is orbiting the star like a carousel. This means that the disk's structure is smoothly continuous in the direction of its rotation on the timescale, roughly, of the accompanying planet's orbital period.

The disk itself is located about 63 light-years from Earth and is exceptionally bright due to the large amount of starlight-scattering dust. Beta Pictoris is also the first and best example of what a young planetary system looks like.

The findings reveal a bit more about the star and its dusty disk. This, in turn, may be important when it comes to studying other planetary systems.

The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal.

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