Figure 5-1 A Circumstellar Disk of Matter (a) Hubble view of Beta Pictoris, an edge-on disk of material 225 billion km (140 billion mi) across that orbits the star Beta Pictoris (blocked out in this image) 50 ly from Earth. Twenty million years old, this disk is believed to be composed primarily of iceberglike bodies that orbit the star. The smaller disk is believed to have been formed by the gravitational pull of a roughly Jupiter-mass planet in that orbit. Because the secondary disk is so dim, the labeling for this image is added in (b).