You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1369_1.asp]Just in from Sky & Telescope online :up:
*B Pictoris is 4th magnitude, young star, maybe 12 to 20 million years old. 63 l/y away. In 1983 a "large, edge-on disk of gas and dust" was discovered around it. They've since discovered "warps and tilts" in the disk.
Discusses 3 dust rings around B Pictoris.
"The results strongly suggest that a giant planet orbits 12 a.u. from the star...The existence of discrete dust rings suggests that the larger bodies are also concentrated into rings (around B Pictoris), akin to our solar system’s asteroid belt...The new, innermost ring is 6.4 a.u. from the star; the next out is at about 16 a.u. A planet at 12 a.u. would conveniently explain both...Since we view the Beta Pictoris disk almost edge on, ALMA will probably not be able to see the putative 12-a.u. planet directly...Still, given the existence of more dust rings farther from the star, Beta Pic could very well have a full-fledged, and very large, juvenile planetary system."
-also-
"The planet's orbit is 25 percent larger than Saturn’s, and its gravity has herded smaller objects into belts much the way Jupiter has shaped our own solar system’s asteroid belt. 'The Beta Pic system is likely to be at a violent, planetesimal-collision stage in an early solar system...'"
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
Offline
Pages: 1