UA scientists make a mark on the solar map

The system, made up of a debris-filled disk, a star and a planet, appears to be a mirror image of our solar system.

Robert Brown, a lunar and planetary sciences professor, and graduate student David Trilling used NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii to locate the circumstellar disk, which is near 55 Cancri, a star similar to the sun. They saw the disk during a three-day observation period in February.

"We suspected there was a disk and our suspicions were correct," Brown said. "We were excited - before disks were seen only around young stars."

Material that makes up the disk is similar to the Kuiper belt in our solar system, Trilling said. The Kuiper belt is a "ring of comets and icy junk" left over when planets are formed.

Similarities would suggest the new-found disk and the belt have similar compositions, which will help scientists learn more about the Earth's solar system, Trilling said.

"Lots of people have been looking for analogs to our solar system," Trilling said. "We've also looked at five or six other stars."

After determining the planet was not a star, scientists can conclude the 55 Cancri system - about the 55th brightest in the Cancer constellation - is similar to the Earth's solar system.

Fourteen other systems have been found so far, Trilling said. "This is to try to paint (a) picture of not only our solar system, but solar systems in general."

Irene Hsiao can be reached via e-mail at Irene.Hsiao@wildcat.arizona.edu.