If in-falling comets were randomly distributed around the dust disc, as many blue shifted features would be expected as red shifted features. The extreme asymmetry of the observed distribution indicates that orbiting planets may be biasing the process which causes comets to fall in towards the surface of Beta Pic from a preferred direction. Therefore the evidence from the high resolution spectrum observations tend to point in the same direction as the HST observations, supporting the hypothesis that Beta Pic has a planetary system. However the FEB mechanism is not without its problems, one of which is that the observed spectral features last longer than expected for a model based on the star-grazing approaches of individual comets. This can be explained if it assumed that showers of comets fall in each event rather than single objects.
More work is required to confirm the true behaviour of the system.
Dr. Tobin also informed us of some recent radar measurements of meteors carried out in Canterbury. An array of three simple antennae near Lake Grassmere south of Banks Peninsula have been recording the signals from incoming meteoric material as it vaporises in the upper atmosphere. The data is sufficient not only to allow both the direction and velocity of the meteors to be determined, but also to allow the determination of the orbit of the meteoric material prior to its arrival at Earth. Even more interesting, is that this anomalous material appears not to be spread evenly around the sky. Neither is it spread evenly around the ecliptic or evenly around the galactic plane.