Abstract
The discovery of planets in orbit around the pulsar PSR1257+12 (ref. 1) shows that planets may form around post-main-sequence stars2. Other evolved stars, such as HD44179 (an evolved star which is part of the binary system that has expelled the gas and dust that make the Red Rectangle nebula), possess gravitationally bound orbiting dust disks3,4. It is possible that planets might form from gravitational collapse in such disks5. Here we report high-angular-resolution observations at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths of the dusk disk associated with the Red Rectangle. We find a dust clump with an estimated mass near that of Jupiter in the outer region of the disk. The clump is larger than our Solar System, and far beyond where planet formation would normally be expected, so its nature is at present unclear.
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Acknowledgements
We thank G. Sandell of the JCMT for performing the service observations, the staff at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory, S. Van Dyk and R. Hurt for help with the imaging, and A. Ghez and B. Zuckerman for comments. J.T. was supported by the NSF, and M.J. was supported by NASA.
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Jura, M., Turner, J. A mysterious dust clump in a disk around an evolved binary star system. Nature 395, 144–145 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/25938
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/25938
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