As all of these objects orbit around the star, just like the Earth circles the Sun, they occasionally collide. "The larger particles will eventually disperse throughout the cloud as it orbits around the central star and the bright clump we see now will essentially dissolve into the disk."ĭisks of material surrounding stars such as Beta Pictoris are thought to contain objects of all sizes, from small dust grains similar to household dust to large planetesimals, or developing planets. "This process moves out the smaller dust particles very quickly and leaves behind the larger debris," said Dermott. Mark Wyatt (of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, UK) show that the timescales necessary to remove this fine dust in Beta Pictoris are on the order of decades. Note:The clump where the suspected collision occurred is to the right of the central white core at a distance of 52 Astronomical Units (AU).Ĭomputer models done at the University of Florida by team members Dr.
Differences in the shape and strength of dust emissions within the disk can be seen as the observed wavelength changes. Gemini mid-infrared images of Beta Pictoris as obtained with T-ReCS on Gemini South. Almost assuredly my grandparents were alive when this collision occurred.” The fact that we still see them in our observations means that the collision probably happened in the past 100 years or so. In Beta Pictoris, the radiation from the star will blow away the fine particles created by the collision quite rapidly. “After you sneeze a few times, you open a window and the fine dust blows away. "Many of us remember pounding chalk dust out of erasers in school,” he said. Scott Fisher of the Gemini Observatory, it is the unique properties of this fine dust that allows speculation on the timing of this collision. The team’s data revealed a significantly higher concentration of small dust grains in one region of the debris disk that gave Beta Pictoris a lopsided appearance in previous observations. The properties of the dust show not only that this was a huge collision, but that it probably happened recently in both astronomical and even human timescales." "Our research is a bit like a detective dusting for fingerprints to figure out a crime scene, only in this case we use the dust as a tracer to show what has happened within the cloud. Charles Telesco of the University of Florida who led the team. "It is as if we were looking back about 5 billion years and watching our own solar system as it was forming into what we see today," said Dr. The mid-infrared observations provide the best evidence yet for the occurrence of energetic encounters between planetesimals during the process of planetary formation. These small dust particles indicate that a recent collision has likely occurred in this debris disk.Īstronomers using the Gemini South 8-meter telescope in Chile have observed new details in the dusty disk surrounding the nearby star Beta Pictoris which show that a large collision between planetary-sized bodies may have occurred there as recently as the past few decades. Resources En Español - Versión adaptada en ChileĮmbargoed until 1:00 pm Eastern (8:00 am HST) JanuMedia ContactĮ-mail: contacts will be attending the 205th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego, California from January 9 - 13, 2005Īrtist’s rendition of the Beta Pictoris system showing scale and the site of the possible collision (bright spot on left) where large quantities of fine dust particles have been observed in the thermal infrared part of the spectrum by the Gemini South Telescope. Gemini In The Era of Multi-Messenger Astronomy.Gemini Telescopes, Science and Technologies.Timing information in Gemini Instruments.