NASA's WEBB Telescope Reveals, Evidence of Massive Collision , Around Nearby Star.
'The Guardian' reports that astronomers have
discovered an enormous cloud of dust surrounding one
of the brightest and closest stars in the night sky. .
Approximately 25 light years from Earth, the star
known as Fomalhaut appears as part of the Piscis
Austrinus, or the southern fish, constellation.
Images previously captured by NASA's Hubble space
telescope and other instruments were only able to provide
a partial picture of Fomalhaut's cloud of cosmic material.
'The Guardian' reports that new images provided
by the James Webb space telescope have
revealed exciting details of the star's surroundings. .
What we see is the dust produced
in collisions between planetesimals,
which themselves are the long
forgotten remnants of the formation
of the planetary system itself, András Gáspár, Lead author on the study at
the University of Arizona, via 'The Guardian'.
András Gáspár, lead author on the study at the University of
Arizona, says the team discovered that Fomalhaut has an
inner asteroid belt surrounded by a second ring of rubble.
Surrounding these first two asteroid belts
is a third ring of debris that resembles
our own solar system's Kuiper belt. .
'The Guardian' reports that the team believe this
massive dust cloud was produced by a collision
between two 400-mile-wide space rocks.
The team believe that unseen planets are circling
within Fomalhaut's nested belts, determining the shape
of the star system with their gravitational fields. .
Planets as low in mass
as Neptune are sufficient
to carve the inner belts, 'Spatially resolved imaging of the inner Fomalhaut disk using JWST/MIRI' authors, via 'Nature Astronomy'