Apr 21 1998
From The Space Library
Two scientific teams, independently studying HR 4796, a star in the southern constellation Centaurus, announced they had captured "the strongest evidence yet" of a new group of planets forming around the star. The teams used the 10-meter (33-foot) W. M. Keck II Telescope on top of the extinct Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, and the National Science Foundation's 4-meter (13-foot) Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Using both of these sensitive new instruments, the research teams believed they could see clearly, through the glare of the star, a planet-forming disc of gas and dust. A third international team of British and American astronomers released the first images of the huge discs, which appeared to be forming around two other stars, Fomalhaut and Vega, the star made famous in the novel and movie Contact. The third team used the 15-meter (49-foot) James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, also atop Mauna Kea. Scientists considered the discoveries of the discs around the stars a missing link in the study of planetary system formation, offering them clues about the formation of rocky planets like Earth .466
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