Beta Pictoris

Common card · No. 221961

Beta Pictoris (abbreviated β Pictoris or β Pic) is the second brightest star in the constellation Pictor. It is located 63.4 light-years (19.4 pc) from the Solar System, and is 1.79 times as massive and 8.7 times as luminous as the Sun. The Beta Pictoris system is very young, only 23 million years old, although it is already in the main sequence stage of its evolution. Beta Pictoris is the title member of the Beta Pictoris moving group, an association of young stars which share the same motion through space and have the same age. Beta Pictoris has three confirmed planets, Beta Pictoris b, Beta Pictoris c, and Beta Pictoris d. All three planets have been detected through the use of direct imaging, although Beta Pictoris c was first confirmed using the radial velocity method. The three planets are orbiting in the plane of the debris disk surrounding the star. Beta Pictoris c is currently the closest extrasolar planet to its star ever photographed: the observed separation is roughly the same...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Pictor_constellation_map.png: Torsten Bronger derivative work: Kxx (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0