![]() “What we’d really, really like to understand is, where can planets form? How far away from their stars can they form? How close to their stars can they form? How do they move around after they form?” Weinberger says. A better understanding of debris disks around other stars could be crucial for understanding how planetary systems form. “Neither of their disks have been really well observed, and we know they're there, so we’ll get to see those systems well defined for the first time,” he says. Gáspár has plans for further JWST observations of the debris disks around the stars Vega and Epsilon Eridani. “It's amazing to see the quality of the data and think about what other new science we will be able to do,” MacGregor says. ![]() The findings are thrilling researchers who have been waiting to see what new possibilities JWST opens up. “It's critical to make sure that … is in fact associated with the system and not a background object.” “Small dust grains are removed on timescales shorter than the age of the system, which means that the dust we see today has to have been regenerated through collisions.”īut “we do not regularly resolve individual collision events,” she points out. “We expect collisions to take place in debris disks,” says astrophysicist Meredith MacGregor of the University of Colorado at Boulder, who was not involved in the study. This "great dust cloud" was spotted in the outer belt, and its size, as well as the size of the dust grains reflecting light to the telescope, suggest the cloud came from a collision between two planetesimals each about 450 miles wide. It would have to be constantly regenerated from collisions between asteroids and comets, and the study team believe that they may have spotted another dust cloud from a collision that is in the process of expanding. The dust in that intermediate ring hasn't been lingering for 400 million years, the estimated age of Fomalhaut. “It fits really well with the theory that Fomalhaut b, the exoplanet candidate, is a dust cloud from a collision, because there is a bunch of stuff at this distance that Fomalhaut b would have had to come from,” Lawler says. The intermediate belt was a surprise, she adds, because previous images hadn't shown anything there. “I could spend a lot of time just staring at that image.” ![]() “It's so cool to finally see all of the structure inside the main dust belt that other telescopes have never been able to see before, so I was just really excited,” says Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, who wasn’t involved in the new research. The gaps between the rings as well as their misalignment suggest that there are unseen planets orbiting the star that are too small to be observed. ![]() Using MIRI, Gáspár and his colleagues saw that the Fomalhaut system not only has an inner disk like the asteroid belt and a big dusty outer ring like the Kuiper belt, but also a fuzzy intermediate ring. It is really a once in a generation opportunity for astronomers.” “And I don't think we're going to see anything like it again in my professional career for sure. Previous space telescopes also had mid-infrared instruments, but MIRI’s aperture is much bigger, which means it can collect more light and resolve fainter objects. This type of light is especially useful for observing dust. MIRI captures mid-infrared light, which the human eye cannot see. There should be debris disks circling thousands of other stars, but observing those faraway belts of smashed up space rock is no easy feat. ![]() We see a very complex and very dynamically active system.” Space leftoversĪround the sun, the asteroid belt and more distant Kuiper belt contain the leftovers of the solar system-asteroids, comets, planetesimals, and other ancient debris that was not incorporated into the planets. “It paints a very different picture from what we assumed we would be seeing,” Gáspár says. ![]()
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