Using the joint NASA\/ESA\/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, a group of astronomers has directly imaged three dusty disks \u2014 the outermost being an asteroid belt \u2014 surrounding a young star. The outermost of the disks was first discovered by NASA\u2019s Infrared Astronomical Satellite in 1983 and has since been imaged in detail by the Hubble Space Telescope, Herschel Space Observatory, and the Atacama large millimeter\/submillimeter array (ALMA). However, none of the images from Hubble, Herschel, or ALMA allowed scientists to determine the internal structure of the disk or the existence of additional disks \u2014 until now.<\/p>\n
With Webb operational at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, scientists were eager to use its extremely sensitive infrared instruments to investigate the disk in infrared. When they finally got their hands on the observatory, they initially set out to just investigate the outermost disk surrounding the star. The results from Webb not only gave the team a look into the interior structure of the disk but also allowed them to discover and characterize two additional disks located closer to the star.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The young star that plays host to these dusty disks is Fomalhaut \u2014 a hot, bright star located in the southern Piscis Austrinus constellation approximately 25 light-years away from Earth. The three disks seen around Fomalhaut, called \u201cdebris disks,\u201d were created from collisions between large bodies of gas, rock, and other cosmic material. These types of disks are commonly found around young stars and serve as places for left-over material from the formation of the star to clump together and potentially form planets or asteroids.<\/p>\n