Debris disk AU Mic HST

Autor/Urheber:

NASA, ESA, J. R. Graham and P. Kalas (University of California, Berkeley), and B. Matthews (Hertzberg Institute of Astrophysics)

Shortlink:

https://dewiki.de/b/24ab98

Quelle:

Wikimedia Commons

Größe:

3000 x 2400 Pixel (510185 Bytes)

Beschreibung:

The top view, taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows light reflected off dust in a debris disk around the young star AU Microscopii. The bottom frame labels features in this image, while the white lines on the disk indicate the light polarization direction. The image shows the flattened disk, appearing like Saturn's rings, but seen almost exactly edge-on. Normally, starlight would be so bright that the debris disk could not be seen. But astronomers used the coronagraph on Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, which blocked out most of the starlight. The black circle in the center of the image is the coronagraph's occulting disk. The disk in this image extends to about 8 billion miles from the star, or three times farther than Neptune is from the Sun. In other observations, the disk has been traced to at least 11 billion miles.

Kommentar zur Lizenz:

http://hubblesite.org/copyright/

Lizenz:

Public domain

Credit:

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/02/image/a/

Bild teilen: