Hubble Images Possible Planet-Forming Systems
News story originally written on February 12, 1999

Image of a star in the constellation Taurus surrounded by a ring of dust. Click on image for full size (61K JPEG) Image courtesy of STScI Scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to take pictures of stars in the constellation Taurus. The stars have rings of dust around them. Scientists think that planets might be forming from the dust. They want to study these stars to find out how our Solar System formed. It's hard to see dust rings like the one in the picture on the left. We can only see the ones that are edge-on. That way the dust blocks most of the light from the stars. Otherwise it would too bright to see the dust.

Hubble Images Possible Planet-Forming Systems
News story originally written on February 12, 1999

Image of a star in the constellation Taurus surrounded by a ring of dust. Click on image for full size (61K JPEG) Image courtesy of STScI Scientists have used the Hubble Space Telescope to take images of possible planet-forming regions. The images show disks of dust circling different stars in the constellation Taurus. Scientists are interested in looking at other planet-forming regions because they hope to learn more about how our Solar System formed. We can only see the disks that are edge-on to us because they block the star's light. Otherwise the star's light will overpower the light reflected by the disks.

Hubble Images Possible Planet-Forming Systems
News story originally written on February 12, 1999

Image of a star in the constellation Taurus surrounded by a ring of dust. Click on image for full size (61K JPEG) Image courtesy of STScI Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) have taken images of possible planet-forming regions. The images show disks of dust circling different stars in the constellation Taurus. "While the existence of these disks has been known from prior infrared and radio observations, the Hubble images reveal important new details such as a disk's size, shape, thickness, and orientation," said Deborah Padgett of Caltech's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. The dust-cloud disks can only be seen edge-on because the stars' light overpowers the reflected light from the disks. Scientists are interested in looking at planet-forming regions because they hope to understand how our Solar System formed.

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