HD 15115: The Blue Needle

The dust disk around HD 15115 first appeared in my Hubble data as a sharp spike pointing west, with hardly anything visible to the east. I nicknamed it the "needle", but unfortunately this type of feature could also be caused by internal reflection within the science camera. Later, using the Keck telescope, we confirmed that the spike seen the Hubble data is a real circumstellar dust disk, and that the dust grains have a very blue color. HD 15115 is presently the most asymmetric dust disk every seen.

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