Rings in the Planetesimal Disk of Beta Pic

Details Rings in the Planetesimal Disk of Beta Pic Rings in the Planetesimal Disk of Beta Pic

2000-01-13

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0001222v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Accepted by ApJ Letters. LaTeX, 13 pages, 4 figures, full PostScript file available from http://www.maths.qmw.ac.uk/~jdl/

Scientific paper

10.1086/312494

The nearby main sequence star Beta Pictoris is surrounded by an edge-on disk of dust produced by the collisional erosion of larger planetesimals. Here we report the discovery of substructure within the northeast extension of the disk midplane that may represent an asymmetric ring system around Beta Pic. We present a dynamical model showing that a close stellar flyby with a quiescient disk of planetesimals can create such rings, along with previously unexplained disk asymmetries. Thus we infer that Beta Pic's planetesimal disk was highly disrupted by a stellar encounter in the last hundred thousand years.

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