The JWST takes pictures of the first asteroid belts ever seen outside the solar system

It is about 25 light years from Earth whale’s mouth, one of the brightest stars in the night sky. The Fomalhaut system has captivated astronomers’ attention for decades, but we’re only now developing a better understanding of it thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. In a study published in the journal On Monday, a group of scientists made up primarily of astronomers from the University of Arizona and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the Fomalhaut system is .

Since 1983, astronomers have known that 440-million-year-old Fomalhaut is surrounded by dust and debris, but what they didn’t expect to find were three different debris fields surrounding the star. One of these, closest to Fomalhaut, is similar to our solar system’s asteroid belt but much more extensive than expected. like Fomalhaut’s inner asteroid belt extends from about seven AU from the star to about 80 AU. To put those numbers into perspective, this is about 10 times more of the inner asteroid belt than astronomers expected to find.

However, this is not the most interesting feature of the Fomalhaut system. Outside of Fomalhaut’s inner asteroid belt, there is a second debris belt that is inclined 23 degrees more than anything else in the star’s orbit. “This is a really unique aspect of the system,” said András Gáspár, lead author of the study. . He added that the tilted belt could be the result of planets in Fomalhaut’s orbit that astronomers have yet to discover.

“The belts around Fomalhaut are a kind of mystery novel: Where are the planets?” said George Rickey, one of the astronomers involved in the study. “I think it’s not too big of a leap to say there might be a really interesting planetary system around the star.”

But farther out from Fomalhaut is our solar system’s Kuiper Belt-like outer debris ring. It includes a feature that Gáspár and his colleagues have dubbed the Great Dust Cloud. It’s unclear if this feature is part of the Fomalhaut system or something shining from behind it, but they suspect it formed when two space rocks more than 400 miles wide collided with each other. According to Gáspár and his associates, there may be three or more planets the size of Uranus and Neptune orbiting Fomalhaut. They are now analyzing JWST images that may reveal the existence of these planets.

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