[6] The age and distance of the group makes it a candidate for directly imaging extrasolar planets.
The Beta Pictoris moving group consists of 17 stellar systems, comprising a total of 28 individual component stars, including identified brown dwarfs.
The core of the group is located some 115 light-years from Earth, and has an average estimated age of between 20 and 26 million years.
[7] Further work published in 2001 identified a total of 17 stellar systems with a similar motion and age as the Beta Pictoris moving group, named for the primary member of the association.
[2] The movements of the group were tracked to the positions they occupied 11.5 Myr ago, where they occupied a space 3 times smaller than their current distribution (24 pc, versus 72 pc today) situated in between two regions of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB star group, and it was suggested that they originated there when a supernova from either OB region of Scorpius-Centaurus OB would have been close enough to trigger stellar formation.