Astronomers from the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine have discovered five exocomets - comets that revolve around a star in another system. An article by scientists was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Scientific American also talks about the discovery..

During the study, astronomers used data from the TESS telescope. In addition to their own discovery, they were also able to confirm the findings of other exocomets made during previous studies..

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In our solar system, comets are being studied as pieces of the past that could reveal the history of the formation of the Earth and other planets.. It is also believed that comets could bring water to our planet, which made it possible to create favorable conditions for the origin and maintenance of life..

“I think exocomets are important for the same reason that comets are in our solar system.. It is clear that comets played an important role in shaping our system.. If the history of our solar system is so strongly associated with exocomets, how can we hope to understand other systems without studying their comets ,"

The discovered exocomets revolve around the star Beta Pictoris, which is located at a distance of 65 light years from the Sun.. The star is much younger than the Sun, it is only 10-40 million years old (our star is 4.5 billion years old). It can provide astronomers with information about what happens in the early stages of the formation of planetary systems.. A giant gas planet revolves around Beta Pictoris, the size of which is 11 times the size of Jupiter. In addition, the star is surrounded by a disk of debris with a diameter of 60 million kilometers..

Usually such disks are chaotic regions in which giant rocks and protoplanets collide.. Comets usually form in these regions.. In young planetary systems, comets fly past their stars much more often, as objects in the disk are constantly moving before they take on their final shape..

Discovered exocomets are not the first to be found near Painter's Beta. It was already known that two groups of comets with different properties revolve around the star.. But the discovery made it possible to add new comets to the number of objects that were found in other star systems..

Earlier, a group of astronomers using the ALMA radio telescope system refined the size of comet C/2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein from the Oort Cloud. The researchers confirmed that the object is a record-breaking large - its diameter is 137 kilometers.