Two families of comets found around nearby star: Biggest census ever of exocomets around beta pictoris

Wednesday, October 22, 2014 - 13:00 in Astronomy & Space

The HARPS instrument at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has been used to make the most complete census of comets around another star ever created. Astronomers have studied nearly 500 individual comets orbiting the star Beta Pictoris and has discovered that they belong to two distinct families of exocomets: old exocomets that have made multiple passages near the star, and younger exocomets that probably came from the recent breakup of one or more larger objects.

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