Comets, Asteroids and Planets around a Nearby Star [ AU Microscopii ]

SpaceDotCom ^ | August 12, 2004 | Robert Roy Britt

[SunkenCiv]

A nearby star thought to harbor comets and asteroids now appears to be home to planets, too. The presumed worlds are smaller than Jupiter and could be as tiny as Pluto, new observations suggest. AU Microscopii, also known as AU Mic, is a relatively nearby and common sort of star. And it is young. Things around it are just gathering together out of the leftovers of star formation... In new observations with the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, researchers found clumps in the disk -- strong evidence that planets exist. "We see multiple clumps in the dust disk," said study leader Michael Liu of the University of Hawaii. "These clumps must be formed by the gravity of unseen newly formed planets." Such clumps have been detected around other stars, but one thing that makes AU Mic interesting is that it is a garden variety star -- its kin make up 85 percent of all known stars. AU Mic is half as massive as the Sun and one-tenth as luminous. It is roughly 10-12 million years old, an infant in star years (our Sun is 4.6 billion years old). And because AU Mic is nearby -- just 33 light-years away in a galaxy that spans more than 100,000 light-years, it is much easier to study than most young stars with dust disks... The planets have to be big enough to cause clumping in the dust, he explained. Theory suggests the minimum possible diameter would similar to that of Pluto. He cautions that this does not mean there are any small planets around AU Mic -- theory is not prepared to fully explain the new observations, he said.

[TruthFactor]

The European Extremely Large Telescope(E-ELT) scheduled to come online in 2017 will exceed the resolution of Hubble by a factor of 10-15 times. Its primary mirror will be 138 ft. across. Here’s a link via PopSCI.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviationspace/ad43b99e388e6110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html