by Staff Writers for Subaru Telescope News Tokyo, Japan (SPX)
Jan 04, 2012 The SEEDS (Strategic Exploration of Exoplanets and
Disks with Subaru Telescope/HiCIAO) project, a five-year
international collaboration launched in 2009 and led by Motohide
Tamura of NAOJ (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan) has
yielded another impressive image that contributes to our
understanding of the link between disks and planet formation.
Researchers used Subaru's planet-finder camera, HiCIAO (High
Contrast Instrument for the Subaru Next Generation Adaptive
Optics), to take a crisp high-contrast image of the dust ring
around HR 4796 A, a young (8-10 million years old) nearby star,
only 240 light years away from Earth. The ring consists of dust
grains in a wide orbit, roughly twice the size of Pluto's orbit,
around the central star. The resolution of the image of the
inner edge of the ring is so precise that an offset between its
center and the star's position can be measured. Although data
from the Hubble Space Telescope