Aug 9 1983
From The Space Library
JPL said that NASA's IRAS launched in January had found a formation of large particles orbiting Vega, one of the brightest stars seen from Earth, in what might be a solar system like Earth's in a different stage of development. This was the first evidence of large solid objects orbiting a star other than the Sun.
IRAS scientists Dr. H.H. Aumann of JPL and Dr. Fred Gillett of Kitt Peak National Observatory, working at the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, England, had decided to use Vega (commonly serving astronomers as a standard for measuring other stars' brightness and spectra) as a source for calibrating IRAS. "To their surprise," Science magazine said that Vega's image in the 20-, 60-, and 100-micrometer channels was much brighter than the infrared images of similar stars or than expected from an A-type star.
The heat-sensitive telescope on IRAS was measuring infrared radiation extending out as far as 80 astronomical units (about 7.4 billion miles) from Vega, reporting the temperature of the bodies in orbit around the star at about -300°F, far above the norm of "cold black space" and about that of the inner rings of Saturn. The JPL announcement said that the material orbiting Vega could compare in mass "to all the nine planets and other matter" in Earth's 'solar system, not including the Sun. Scientists had long speculated that Earth and its companion planets were not the only system of that type in the cosmos, but they had never had evidence to prove it. The IRAS discovery was a bonus of the decision to use Vega as a ship's navigator might use the North Star as a guide across the ocean. (JPL Release Aug 9/83; NASA Release 83-120; NY Times, Aug 10/83, A-1; W Post, Aug 10/83, A-1; Aug 11/83, A-2, A-22; Science, Aug 26/83, 846)
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