NASA's Webb telescope uncovers intricate dusty world around nearby young star Fomalhaut

This image of the dusty debris disk surrounding Fomalhaut, a hot young star in the southern constellation Piscis Austrinus, is from the James Webb Space Telescope. This is the first infrared look at an asteroid belt outside our solar system, thanks to Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

Webb revealed three nested belts extending out to 14 billion miles (23 billion kilometers) from the star, which is about 150 times the distance of Earth from the Sun. While the outermost belt of Fomalhaut's debris disk has been captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, Herschel Space Observatory, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the past, no distinct structures within the inner regions was identified. For the first time, two inner belts were also revealed by Webb in infrared light.

The dusty belts encircling the young hot star are the debris from collisions of larger bodies, analogous to asteroids and comets, and are often referred to as debris disks. These belts are believed to have been shaped by the gravitational forces exerted by unseen planets within the system.

Similarly, Jupiter's gravitational influence is responsible for corralling the asteroids within the asteroid belt, Neptune sculpts the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt of our solar system, and it is speculated that the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt may be guided by as-yet-unseen celestial bodies located beyond it.

"I would describe Fomalhaut as the archetype of debris disks found elsewhere in our galaxy because it has components similar to those we have in our own planetary system," said Andrss Gaspar of the University of Arizona in Tucson and lead author of a new paper describing these results.

"The belts around Fomalhaut are kind of a mystery novel: Where are the planets? I think it's not a very big leap to say there's probably a really interesting planetary system around the star," said George Rieke, another team member and U.S. science lead for Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

The study is published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Webb has a new achievement under its (asteroid) belt!This image is our first infrared look at an asteroid belt outside our solar system. Webb reveals there are actually 3 belts, including 2 never-before-seen inner belts, around the star of Fomalhaut: https://t.co/pDQKAh4hDA pic.twitter.com/GWed3Bbu4m

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) May 8, 2023