NASA has showed in motion the planet and debris disk around nearby star Beta Pictoris through a new computer simulation. The planet’s motion drives spiral waves throughout the disk and can be seen through the supercomputer simulation of the planet and debris disk around Beta Pictoris.

Erika Nesvold, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who co-developed the simulation, said they were aiming at creating a virtual Beta Pictoris in the computer and watching it evolve over millions of years.

“This is the first full 3-D model of a debris disk where we can watch the development of asymmetric features formed by planets, like warps and eccentric rings, and also track collisions among the particles at the same time”, said Nesvold.

Beta Pictoris was revealed to be the second star to be surrounded by a bright disk of dust and debris in 1984. Beta Pictoris is estimated to be 21 million years old, or less than 1% the age of our solar system. Its location is 63 light-years away.

The existence of Beta Pictoris b, a planet with an estimated mass of about nine times Jupiter's, was confirmed in the debris disk around Beta Pictoris by researchers in 2009.

Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, said the simulation suggests that many features seen in the disk can be correctly explained by a pair of colliding spiral waves excited in the disk by the motion and gravity of Beta Pictoris b.