Researchers from the Paris Institute of Astrophysics have been observing the Beta Pictoris star as an example of a relatively young solar system for almost thirty years. They have published the contents of their research, which found that there are hundreds of comets in orbit of the star.

Researchers from the Paris Institute of Astrophysics have been observing the Beta Pictoris star as an example of a relatively young solar system for almost thirty years.

Now, the same team’s most recent publication details the hundreds of exocomets in orbit of the star.

There is also reportedly one large Jupiter-like exoplanet called Beta Pictoris b that was discovered and imaged by members of the same research team.

Nearly five hundred comets have been spotted circling around the star using eight years of data from the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS instrument at the La Silla facility in Chile.

The results of the study also show how similar astrophysical processes happen in our solar system.

Flavien Kiefer, lead author of the study from the Paris Institute of Astrophysics is quoted as saying: "This reinforces the feeling that when looking to the Beta Pictoris and its environment, we are observing a somewhat younger version of our sun, when it was 10 million to 20 million years old and it just formed its planets."

Observing young solar systems in the far reaches of space can help researchers understand how our own solar system might have formed in the distant past.