Beta Pictoris is a young star that is only about 20 million years old. It is located 63 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Pictor. The star is twice as massive as our Sun and 10 times more luminous. It has a disk of debris around it, thought to be leftover material from the formation of planets. This makes Beta Pic an important target for studies of planet formation.
Beta Pic was first discovered in 1879 by Lewis A. Swift. He found it while searching for comets using a new type of telescope he had built himself. In 1983, astronomers discovered that Beta Pic had a disk of debris around it using the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). This was the first time such a disk had been seen around another star similar to our Sun.
The debris disk around Beta Pic extends out to about 100 AU from the star (1 AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun). It is thought to be made up of dust particles that are about 1 micron in size (about 1/100th the width of a human hair). These dust particles are constantly colliding and grinding together, producing even smaller particles. Over time, this process could lead to the formation of planets in the disk.
Studies have shown that there may already be at least one planet orbiting Beta Pic within the innermost part of its debris disk. This planet, called Beta Pictoris b, was first imaged in 2008 by direct imaging using adaptive optics on Keck Observatory’s 10 meter telescope. The planet has since been observed with several other telescopes including ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
BetaPic b orbits very close to its host star at only 9 AU (compared to Saturn’s orbit at 14 AU). Due to its proximity to the star, it must be incredibly hot – estimates put its surface temperature at over 1700 degrees Celsius! Despite this extreme heat, betaPic b may still have water vapor in its atmosphere because it is so young and still cooling off from its formation temperatures which were likely much higher than 1700 degrees Celsius.”