A protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disc of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star, a T Tauri star, or Herbig Ae/Be star. The protoplanetary disk may also be considered an accretion disk for the star itself, because gases or other material may be falling from the inner edge of the disk onto the surface of the star. This process should not be confused with the accretion process thought to build up the planets themselves. Externally illuminated photo-evaporating protoplanetary disks are called proplyds.
HD 107146 is a star in the constellation Coma Berenices that is located about 90 light-years (28 pc) from Earth. The apparent magnitude of 7.028 makes this star too faint to be seen with the unaided eye.
HD 210277 is a single star in the equatorial constellation of Aquarius. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 6.54, which makes it a challenge to view with the naked eye, but it is easily visible in binoculars. The star is located at a distance of 69.5 light years from the Sun based on parallax, but is drifting closer with a radial velocity of −20.9 km/s.
BD+20°307 is a close binary star system approximately 300 light-years away in the constellation Aries. The system is surrounded by a dusty ring, and probably orbited by a 0.48M☉ white dwarf on a wide orbit.
HD 69830 is a yellow dwarf star located 41.0 light-years away in the constellation of Puppis. In 2005, the Spitzer Space Telescope discovered a narrow ring of warm debris orbiting the star. The debris ring contains substantially more dust than the Solar System's asteroid belt. In 2006, three extrasolar planets with minimum masses comparable to Neptune were confirmed in orbit around the star, located interior to the debris ring.
NGC 2547 is a southern open cluster in Vela, discovered by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1751 from South Africa. The star cluster is young with an age of 20-30 million years.
Iota Centauri, Latinized from ι Centauri, is a star in the southern constellation of Centaurus. Based upon parallax measurements, it lies at a distance of approximately 58.6 light-years from Earth. Iota Centauri has an apparent visual magnitude of +2.73, making it easily visible to the naked eye.
A debris disk, or debris disc, is a circumstellar disk of dust and debris in orbit around a star. Sometimes these disks contain prominent rings, as seen in the image of Fomalhaut on the right. Debris disks are found around stars with mature planetary systems, including at least one debris disk in orbit around an evolved neutron star. Debris disks can also be produced and maintained as the remnants of collisions between planetesimals, otherwise known as asteroids and comets.
Eta Corvi is an F-type main-sequence star, the sixth-brightest star in the constellation of Corvus. Two debris disks have been detected orbiting this star, one at ~150 AU, and a warmer one within a few astronomical units (AU).
HD 98800, also catalogued as TV Crateris, is a quadruple star system in the constellation of Crater. Parallax measurements made by the Hipparcos spacecraft put it at a distance of about 150 light-years away, but this value is in high error. The system is located within the TW Hydrae association (TWA), and has received the designation TWA 4.
HD 113766 is a binary star system located 424 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. The star system is approximately 10 million years old and both stars are slightly more massive than the Sun. The two are separated by an angle of 1.3 arcseconds, which, at the distance of this system, corresponds to a projected separation of at least 170 AU.
HD 100546 is a star 316.4 light-years from Earth. It is orbited by an approximately 20 MJ exoplanet at 6.5 AU, although further examination of the disk profile indicates it might be a more massive object such as a brown dwarf or more than one planet. The star is surrounded by a circumstellar disk from a distance of 0.2 to 4 AU, and again from 13 AU out to a few hundred AU, with evidence for a protoplanet forming at a distance of around 47 AU.
HR 4796 is a binary star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus. Parallax measurements put it at a distance of 235 light-years from the Earth. The two components of this system have an angular separation of 7.7 arcseconds, which, at their estimated distance, is equivalent to a projected separation of about 560 Astronomical Units (AU), or 560 times the separation of the Earth from the Sun. The star and its ring resemble an eye, and it is sometimes known by the nickname "Sauron's Eye".
HD 210277 b is an extrasolar planet orbiting the star HD 210277. It was discovered in September 1998 by the California and Carnegie Planet Search team using the highly successful radial velocity method. The planet is at least 24% more massive than Jupiter. The mean distance of the planet from the star is slightly more than Earth's distance from the Sun. However, the orbit is very eccentric, so at periastron this distance is almost halved, and at apastron it is as distant as Mars is from the Sun.
An exocomet, or extrasolar comet, is a comet outside the Solar System, which includes rogue comets and comets that orbit stars other than the Sun. The first exocomets were detected in 1987 around Beta Pictoris, a very young A-type main-sequence star. There are now a total of 27 stars around which exocomets have been observed or suspected.
HD 23514, is a star in the Pleiades. It is a main-sequence star of class F6, and has been seen to have hot dust particles orbiting around it. These materials, otherwise known as planetesimals which orbit within a circumstellar disc, are evidence of possible planetary formation. The debris disk shows evidence of being rich in silica.
HD 115600 is a star in the constellation Centaurus and a member of the Scorpius–Centaurus association, the nearest OB association to the Sun and the host star of a bright Kuiper belt-like debris ring.
HD 219623 is a solitary star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Cassiopeia. HD 219623 is its Henry Draper Catalogue designation. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 5.59, which lies in the brightness range that is visible to the naked eye. According to the Bortle scale, it can be observed from dark suburban skies. Parallax measurements place it at an estimated distance of around 67.2 light years. It has a relatively high proper motion, advancing 262 mas per year across the celestial sphere.
HD 169142 is a single Herbig Ae/Be star. Its surface temperature is 7650±150 K. HD 169142 is depleted of heavy elements compared to the Sun, with a metallicity Fe/H index of −0.375±0.125, but is much younger at an age of 7.5±4.5 million years. The star is rotating slowly and has relatively low stellar activity for a Herbig Ae/Be star.
A circumplanetary disk is a torus, pancake or ring-shaped accumulation of matter composed of gas, dust, planetesimals, asteroids or collision fragments in orbit around a planet. Around the planets, they are the reservoirs of material out of which moons may form. Such a disk can manifest itself in various ways.
