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Image
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(LARGE
160 K JPG IMAGE) (VERY
LARGE 608 K TIFF IMAGE)
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Image
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(LARGE
192 K JPG IMAGE) (VERY
LARGE 640 K TIFF IMAGE)
This
picture is a wide field-of-view shot of the dust cloud around
LkHa101 that shows its previously unknown companion star.
It was also taken in September, 1998 using the interferometer
aperture mask with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRC) instrument
on the Keck telescope, Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Like the close-up
image, it was made using near infrared light, but at a slightly
different energy level (1.65 microns). The dust cloud around
LkHa101 is the large, bright area on the right, and the newly-discovered
companion star with surrounding hot dust is the faint region
in the upper left. Prior observations did not have sufficient
resolution to detect the companion star, which orbits around
LkHa101 at a distance of about 2.6 billion miles. The bar
on the bottom axis is for scale, 20 Astronomical Units (AU)
is about 1.86 billion miles, or 20 times the Earth's distance
from the Sun. The right picture has the orbits of Earth and
Uranus added for scale.
Image credit: The National Science Foundation, NASA and the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
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Image
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(LARGE
160 K JPG IMAGE) (VERY
LARGE 640 K TIFF IMAGE)
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Image
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(LARGE
192 K JPG IMAGE) (VERY
LARGE 576 K TIFF IMAGE)
These
images are an artist's concept of the dust cloud around LkHa101.
We are seeing the cloud at a slight angle (no more than 35
degrees) to the star's axis of rotation; if we were viewing
directly down the rotation axis, the image would appear ring-shaped
(left picture). Instead, we see a crescent shape because one
side of the "donut" is tipped towards us (right picture).
The bar on the bottom axis is for scale, 20 Astronomical Units
(AU) is about 1.86 billion miles, or 20 times the Earth's
distance from the Sun. The
right picture has Jupiter's orbit added for scale.
Image
credit: NASA, Joseph Miller.
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