Thursday, September 4, 2025

Clues In A Dusty Disk Point The Way To A Potential Exoplanet

Hubble Space Telescope observations of the Beta Pictoris debris disk. When astronomers examined this disk in detail, they found clues to where a small planet could be hiding. They eventually found the exoplanet and directly imaged it, and the same thing is happening around another star. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Apai and G. Schneider (University of Arizona)

Astronomers struggle to detect small exoplanets directly. One tool they use is to search for the effects these planets have on debris disks around stars. Clues in these disks tell astronomers where they can find sub-Jupiter mass exoplanets.



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