Astronomers generally assume that the dusty disks where planets form are found around young stars in stellar nurseries. Now, for the first time, a planet-forming disk has been found in the environment of a dying star.
A team of astronomers reported at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society that material from the dying star Mira A is being captured into a disk around Mira B, its companion. Michael Ireland of the California Institute of Technology and his coauthors, John Monnier from the University of Michigan, Peter Tuthill from the University of Sydney, and Richard Cohen from the W. M. Keck Observatory, say that the finding implies that there should be many similar undiscovered systems in the solar neighborhood, providing a myriad of new places to look for young planets orbiting stars other than our Sun.
Note: The accompanying photo is spectacular.
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