A striking NASA Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared picture of a disk around the star HD 141569, located about 320 light-years away in the constellation Libra. Hubble shows that the 75 billion-mile wide disk seems to come in two parts: a dark band separates a bright inner region from a fainter outer region. The structure superficially looks much like the largest gap in Saturn's rings - but on a vastly larger scale. The Hubble image, taken at a wavelength of 1.1 microns, was made using the coronagraph in the Near Infrared and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) to reduce the glare of the star. The observed radiation from the disk is caused by dust particles which reflect the light of the central star. The dark spikes in the image are regions where there are no useful data due to diffraction artifacts introduced by the optical systems of the telescope and camera. The central portion of the disk remains unseen because of residual glare from the bright star.
Credits
Credit: Alycia Weinberger, Eric Becklin (UCLA), Glenn Schneider (University of Arizona) and NASA| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | HD 141569 |
| R.A. Position | 15h 49m 57.74s |
| Dec. Position | -3° 55' 16.35" |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
