Illustration of BP Piscium
In the close-up view shown in the artist's illustration on the right, BP Psc is surrounded by a dusty and gaseous disk and has a pair of jets several light years long blasting out of the system. For clarity a narrow jet is shown, but the actual jet is probably much wider, extending across the inner regions of the disk. Because of the dusty disk, the star's surface is obscured in optical and near-infrared light. Therefore, the Chandra observation is the first detection of this star in any wavelength. The illustration on the left shows what the BP Psc system might have looked like about a billion years ago. On the left side is BP Psc before becoming a red giant and on the right is the low-mass star that BP Psc may have engulfed much more recently, when it expanded to become a red giant.
(Credit: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss)

X-ray and Optical Images of BP Piscium
These images show X-ray and optical data for BP Piscium (BP Psc), a more evolved version of our Sun about 1,000 light years from Earth. Chandra X-ray Observatory data are colored in purple, and optical data from the 3-meter Shane telescope at Lick Observatory are shown in orange, green and blue. BP Psc is surrounded by a dusty and gaseous disk and has a pair of jets several light years long blasting out of the system.
(Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/RIT/J.Kastner et al), Optical (UCO/Lick/STScI/M.Perrin et al))