D.C. Bruhweiler and his colleagues also took pictures of the star's disk with Hubble, but they looked at the entire disk, which extends some 1,500 times the distance between our sun and the Earth. Their images also show a similar, but much larger warp to the top right and bottom left of the disk. That presents three possibilities. Perhaps the gravity of Heap's planet nudges the dust and gas a billion miles away. Or the two bulges have different causes and just by coincidence line up in the same direction.
Some details differ.
Beta Pictoris is 60 percent larger than the sun and burns eight times brighter. Other details are the same. Based on the colors of light reflected by outer disk, Sergio Fajardo-Acosta of the University of Denver and his colleagues suggest the outer parts of Beta Pictoris' disk appear to contain ice and a silicate mineral called olivine. That's similar to what's found in comets. That's sort of like trying to understand your infancy by looking at another baby.