Hubble captures vast dust arc near star Beta Pictoris
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken visible-light images of a dust structure about 93 billion miles long near the star Beta Pictoris, roughly 63 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pictor. The structure is part of a disk of dust and debris around the star. A study led by University of Arizona planetary scientist Arin Avsar, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, combined the new images with observations spanning more than 14 years. The authors say the structure may be the aftermath of a collision between bodies the size of Pluto. Separately, researchers reported two gaseous debris rings around the white dwarf J1328-1450, and a study suggested a suspected black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud is a rapidly spinning star.
Key facts
- The Hubble image of Messier 30, a globular cluster about 27,500 light-years away, was released by ESA on 5 Nov.
- NASA released a gallery of gravitational lenses that lays groundwork for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
- The rings around J1328-1450 have different chemical compositions, and smaller bodies may have survived the star's death.
- The Milky Way is home to at least 150 globular clusters, some estimated at 11.5 to 13.5 billion years old.
Summarised with AI from 5 sources · Updated 08:41Read our AI policy
What changed
The Times of India joined as a source
First published from ScienceDaily, Space.com, NASA and Phys.org