Fomalhaut is one of the brightest stars in the night sky—and the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed belts of material orbiting the star in stunning detail
A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope has given scientists a stunning look at the dusty belts of debris surrounding a nearby star. Similar to the asteroid belt in our own solar system, these orbiting rings of shattered rock and ice can help reveal how planetary systems form.
The Fomalhaut system became even more intriguing in 2008 when astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope detected what appeared to be a massive planet orbiting the star. Fomalhaut b was the first exoplanet directly observed in visible light. But it seemed to vanish in later observations, and in 2020,of the University of Arizona led a study that found the object was likely a cloud of dust billowing out from a collision between two smaller objects.
MIRI captures mid-infrared light, which the human eye cannot see. This type of light is especially useful for observing dust. 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. , an astronomer at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “I could spend a lot of time just staring at that image.”Fomalhaut b was once thought to be a planet, but researchers now believe it was a dust cloud from the aftermath of a collision between two 125-mile-wide protoplanetary bodies. The newly discovered"great dust cloud" could be the aftermath of such a collision, but from much larger bodies.
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