Beta Pictoris

system

Beta Pictoris — a brilliant young star 63 light-years away in Pictor, famous for TWO firsts: its bright, edge-on DEBRIS DISK (the first ever imaged around another star, 1984) and a giant planet caught DIRECTLY IMAGED sweeping through it. A planetary system still being born.

Open in 3D viewSee Beta Pictoris in the live, interactive 3D map

Science

Classification

Type: Planetary system
Distance: ~63 light-years · its real distance from the Sun
Explore: Descend to see the star and its confirmed planets

How we know

Note: A real star system, shown at its measured position in the galaxy. Its star and confirmed planets — their measured sizes and how each was found — are on the cards inside; descend to explore them. Distances follow Gaia parallax; planet data follow the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

Discovery & history

Name: A Bayer designation (β Pictoris) — the 'beta' star of Pictor, the Painter's Easel.

Only ~23 million years old, Beta Pictoris is ringed by a vast disk of dust and debris — the first such disk photographed (1984) — within which a giant planet, Beta Pic b, was directly imaged in 2008; a second (c) followed by radial velocity and a third (d) by imaging in 2026.

Images

A REAL direct image of the giant planet Beta Pictoris b beside its star (Gemini Planet Imager, first light) — an actual photograph, not a concept. — C. Marois (NRC Canada) / Gemini Observatory (CC BY 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons

A REAL image of Beta Pictoris b within its edge-on debris disk (ESO / VLT) — the planet photographed sweeping through the disk. — ESO / A.-M. Lagrange et al. (CC BY 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons

The Beta Pictoris debris disk imaged edge-on by the Hubble Space Telescope — a real photograph of the first debris disk ever imaged around another star. — NASA / ESA / STScI, Al Schultz (public domain) · Wikimedia Commons

Images from open archives · credit shown per image