New view of Beta Pictoris

Esahubble_opo1506b_1024

esahubble_opo1506b February 20th, 2015

Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Apai and G. Schneider (University of Arizona)

This is the most detailed picture to date of a large, edge-on, gas-and-dust disc encircling the 20 million year old star Beta Pictoris. It is compared with a previous image of the disc. Beta Pictoris remains the only directly imaged debris disc that has a giant planet (discovered in 2009) with an orbital period short enough (estimated to be between 18 and 22 years) that astronomers can see large motion in just a few years. This allows scientists to study how the Beta Pictoris disc is distorted by the presence of a massive planet embedded within the disc. The new visible-light Hubble image traces the disc to within about one billion kilometres of the star (which is inside the radius of Saturn's orbit about the Sun). Links: NASA Press release Beta Pictoris - Comparison

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo1506b/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Beta Pictoris
Subject - Milky Way
Star > Circumstellar Material > Disk

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Hubble (STIS ) -
Esahubble_opo1506b_1280
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ID
opo1506b
Subject Category
B.3.7.2  
Subject Name
Beta Pictoris
Credits
NASA, ESA, and D. Apai and G. Schneider (University of Arizona)
Release Date
2015-02-20T10:29:45
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo1506b/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
STIS
Color Assignment
Band
Bandpass
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
opo1506b
Metadata Date
2015-02-17T16:12:33-05:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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