Reported in my local paper

<bold>Formation of planetary system discovered</bold>

January 16, 2007 - 12:29PM

An international team of astronomers, including Australians, has discovered new evidence that challenges the traditional belief that new planetary systems only form around young stars in stellar nurseries.

Professor Peter Tuthill from Sydney University's School of Physics and graduate Michael Ireland are part of the team which recently observed material from the dying star, Mira A, being captured into a disc around its companion Mira B, laying the foundations for a new planetary system.

The observation, presented at the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society, challenges the belief that the dusty discs, where planets form, are only found around young stars and not in the environment of a dying star.

Prof Tuthill said astronomers traditionally associated the death of a star with the death of its planetary system, but here the opposite was happening.

"It came as a real revelation to see this faint mote of dust, harbouring all the new possibilities of new worlds in formation, against the hostile environment of the 'Red Giant'," Prof Tuthill said.