Dusty Planetary Disks Around Two Nearby Stars Resemble Our Kuiper Belt

These two bright debris disks of ice and dust appear to be the equivalent of our own solar system's Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy rocks outside the orbit of Neptune and the source of short-period comets. The disks encircle the types of stars around which there could be habitable zones and planets for life to develop. The disks seem to have a central area cleared of debris, perhaps by planets. The new disks, each about 60 light-years from Earth, bring to nine the number of dusty debris disks observable at visible wavelengths. The new ones are different, however, in that they are old enough -- more than 300 million years -- to have settled into stable configurations akin to those in our own solar system, which is 4.6 billion years old. Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas (University of California, Berkeley)