The nearby Beta Pictoris planetary system, located 63 light-years away from us, has fascinated researchers for decades.
Now, astronomers have found 30 exocomets, or comets located outside our Solar System, orbiting the star Beta Pictoris, which makes it even more intriguing.
The star Beta Pictoris was discovered nearly 40 years ago. It is surrounded by a debris disk made of gas and dust, which has already given birth to two young planets orbiting the star.
It offers researchers a rare chance to observe a planetary system in the process of formation.
While our solar system is 4.5 billion years old, Beta Pictoris is only 20 million years old – which is young, astronomically speaking.
Scientists were able to detect some comets grazing the star as early as 1987, making them the first comets ever observed around a star beyond our sun.
An international research team observed the Beta Pictoris system for 156 days using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, mission.
In addition to discovering 30 exocomets, the researchers were also able to determine the size of cometary nuclei — the icy “dirty snowball” that makes up a comet’s heart. When comets pass close to a star, the star’s heat causes its ice to sublimate, creating long, fluid tails that can extend behind comets.
The nuclei of exocomets range between three and 14 kilometers in diameter, similar to comets in our own solar system. This is the first time astronomers have measured the size distribution of comets in another planetary system.
A study detailing the finding was published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
In Beta Pictoris, comets “graze the star almost every day,” said lead study author Alain Lecavelier des Etangs, a CNRS researcher at the Paris Astrophysics Institute, in a statement.
Like the comets that astronomers study in our Solar System, exocomets were shaped by collisions with other objects.
“This shows the importance of interactions, collisions, exchange of material between planets and small bodies such as asteroids or comets in the early stage of the life of a planetary system,” said Lecavelier des Etangs.
Some of the water on Earth likely originated from comets and its ice content, so scientists are curious to know how comets might also have impacted exoplanets.
“We cannot guarantee that observed comets can provide material such as water to planets orbiting Beta Pictoris, but our observations show that collisions are very common and therefore suggest that temperate planets may be enriched in material trapped in frozen ice captured by the planets. comets when (comets) are far from the star and then collide with the planets,” he said.
While there are many similarities between Beta Pictoris’ exocomets and our Solar System’s comets, exactly how similar and different they are “remains to be determined,” said Lecavelier des Etangs.
Exocomets can help clarify the origin and evolution of comets in general, and future observations of the planetary system using Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope could reveal more details about them.
“The question of the composition of these comets remains open,” he said.
The researchers want to determine which substance sublimes, or turns from solid to gas, as exocomets approach the star Beta Pictoris. It could be water ice, carbon monoxide, or something else entirely.
The system has the unique combination of three factors that keep astronomers coming back: it’s young, it’s close, and the telescopes have the perfect perspective of Earth.
“Nature has provided us with such an incredible target,” said Lecavelier des Etangs. “Many questions remain open. I’m sure Beta Pictoris will keep us busy for decades to come!”
Source: CNN Brasil
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