A Distant Solar System (Artist’s Concept)

Debris Disks Around Sun-Like Stars AU Microscopii and HD 107146

[LEFT: AU Microscopii] - A visible-light image of a debris disk around the red dwarf star AU Microscopii. Planets may be forming, or might already exist, within it. The disk glows in starlight reflected by tiny grains of dust created by the collisions of asteroids and comets....

Disk of Debris Around Red Dwarf Star AU Microscopii

A visible-light image of a debris disk around the red dwarf star AU Microscopii. Planets may be forming, or might already exist, within it. The disk glows in starlight reflected by tiny grains of dust created by the collisions of asteroids and comets. Because it is composed of...

Planetary Debris Disk Encircling Yellow Dwarf Star HD 107146

This is a false-color view of a planetary debris disk encircling the star HD 107146, a yellow dwarf star very similar to our Sun, though it is much younger (between 30 and 250 million years old, compared to the almost 5 billion years age of the Sun). The star is 88 light-years...

The View from Within AU Microscopii's Disk

This is an artist's impression of the view from the vicinity of a hypothetical terrestrial planet and moon orbiting the red dwarf star AU Microscopii. The relatively newborn 12 million year-old star is surrounded by a very dusty disk of debris from the collision of comets,...

Model of AU Microscopii Disk

This is a so-called scatter model based on the Hubble Space Telescope image of the planetary debris encircling the star AU Microscopii. Though the real disk is tilted nearly edge-on to Earth, this oblique view is from 30 degrees above the disk plane. This model clearly shows a...

Is There Anybody Home?

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope recently captured these infrared images of six older stars with known planets. The yellow, fuzzy clouds are discs of dust, or "debris discs," like the one that surrounds our own Sun. Though astronomers had predicted that stars with planets would...

Planets Point to Dust

This graph of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicates that stars with known planets (blue) are more likely to have "debris discs" than stars without known planets (red). Debris discs are made up of dust and small rocky bodies, like comets. They are the leftover...

Artist's Concept of a Debris Disk Outside a Planetary System

This animation portrays an artist's concept of a distant hypothetical solar system, about the same age as our own. It begins close to the star, and then moves out past a number of planets. Though "extrasolar" planets are too small to be seen with telescopes, astronomers have...

Animation of the Development of a Debris Disk into a Planetary System

This animation shows the evolution of a planet-forming disc around a star. Initially, the young disc is bright and thick with dust, providing raw materials for building planets. In the first 10 million years or so, gaps appear within the disc as newborn planets coalesce out of...