NASA | Ames | USRA | SOFIA | 2017 May 02
[img3="Artist's illustration of the Epsilon Eridani system showing Epsilon Eridani b. In the right foreground, a Jupiter-mass planet is shown orbiting its parent star at the outside edge of an asteroid belt. In the background can be seen another narrow asteroid or comet belt plus an outermost belt similar in size to our solar system's Kuiper Belt. The similarity of the structure of the Epsilon Eridani system to our solar system is remarkable, although Epsilon Eridani is much younger than our sun. SOFIA observations confirmed the existence of the asteroid belt adjacent to the orbit of the Jovian planet. (Credits: NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook)"]http://www.news.iastate.edu/media/2017/05/4FTY.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]NASA’s flying observatory, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, recently completed a detailed study of a nearby planetary system. The investigations confirmed that this nearby planetary system has an architecture remarkably similar to that of our solar system.
Located 10.5 light-years away in the southern constellation Eridanus, the star Epsilon Eridani, Eps Eri for short, is the closest planetary system around a star similar to the early Sun. It is a prime location to research how planets form around stars like our Sun, and is also the storied location of the Babylon 5 space station in the science fictional television series of the same name.
Previous studies indicate that Eps Eri has a debris disk, which is the name astronomers give to leftover material still orbiting a star after planetary construction has completed. The debris can take the form of gas and dust, as well as small rocky and icy bodies. Debris disks can be broad, continuous disks or concentrated into belts of debris, similar to our solar system’s asteroid belt and the Kuiper Belt -- the region beyond Neptune where hundreds of thousands of icy-rocky objects reside. Furthermore, careful measurements of the motion of Eps Eri indicates that a planet with nearly the same mass as Jupiter circles the star at a distance comparable to Jupiter’s distance from the Sun. ...
Astronomers Confirm Nearby Star as a Good Model of Our Early Solar System
Iowa State University | 2017 May 02
The Inner 25 au Debris Distribution in the Eps Eri System - Kate Y. L. Su et al
- Astronomical Journal 153(5):226 (2017 May) DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/aa696b
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1703.10330 > 30 Mar 2017
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=14587
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=22169