Painter constellation tagged posts

Illustration of the dust ring surrounding HD 181327. Credit: Amanda Smith, University of Cambridge

Astronomers have found evidence of ice and comets orbiting a nearby sun-like star, which could give a glimpse into how our own solar system developed. Using Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, detected very low levels of CO around the star, in amounts that are consistent with the comets in our own solar system. The results are a first step in establishing the properties of comet clouds around sun-like stars just after the time of their birth.

Comets are essentially ‘dirty snowballs’ of ice and rock, sometimes with a tail of dust and evaporating ice trailing behind them, and are formed early in the development of stellar systems...