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Surprisingly fast motions in a dust disk

Nature volume 526, pages 204–205 (2015)Cite this article

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A recently commissioned planet-finding instrument has been used to study a young solar system around the star AU Microscopii, leading to the discovery of rapidly moving features in the dust disk around the star. See Letter p.230

In the southern sky hangs the constellation Microscopium, 'the microscope', one of several minor constellations named after scientific instruments in the eighteenth century. Using some much more recent instrumentation, Boccaletti et al.1 (page 230 of this issue) have now observed with fresh clarity a young solar system nestled within that constellation, homing in on a dusty ring of debris around the star AU Microscopii (AU Mic). These observations from the ground match or exceed the resolution with which this debris disk was previously seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. When the authors compared the new images with the older Hubble data, they discovered several localized areas of enhanced brightness, perhaps clouds or clumps of dust, moving outwards from the star surprisingly fast on trajectories suggesting that the clouds are likely to escape into interstellar space.

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Figure 1: Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE).

J.Girard (djulik.com)/ESO/(CC by 4.0)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marshall D. Perrin is at the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.,

    Marshall D. Perrin

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  1. Marshall D. Perrin
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Correspondence to Marshall D. Perrin.

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Perrin, M. Surprisingly fast motions in a dust disk. Nature 526, 204–205 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/526204a

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