The first star ever searched for signs of intelligent life was Tau Ceti. A mere 12 light-years away, Tau Ceti has been featured in many science fiction stories and closely resembles our sun, according to Scientific American.
Five potentially habitable planets larger than our Earth were believed to be discovered orbiting Tau Ceti in 2012 and now, new far-infrared images from the Herschel Space Observatory shine some light on the star's dust belt.
"It's quite a wide dust belt," Samantha Lawler of the University of Victoria in British Columbia said, according to Scientific American. Dust occurs when asteroids and comets collide, and it is easiest to see around a bright star.
The position of our sun's asteroid belt is two to three astronomical units (AUs) away from the star. According to Lawler's research, that is the same distance from Tau Ceti and its dust belt. (An AU is the distance from the Earth to the sun, according to Scientific American).
A better view of the belt's inner edge should be captured within a year by radio telescopes in Chile called ALMA. ALMA will also tell astronomers if the five planets are indeed real, according to Scientific American.
If the five planets are real, Tau Ceti's solar system would be like ours if the four giants - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - never formed.
