James Webb captures asteroid belt around planet Fomalhaut. Much larger than our own Kuiper Belt.

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Foto: NASA, ESA, CSA, A. Pagan (STScI), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)

James Webb captures asteroid belt around planet Fomalhaut

Much larger than our own Kuiper Belt

Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to take a look at an asteroid belt outside our own solar system for the first time in infrared light. This is a massive asteroid belt that surrounds the relatively young star Fomalhaut, which is located about 25 light-years from the Sun in the constellation Pisces Austrinus.

The asteroid belt around Fomalhaut is larger and more complex than our own Kuiper Belt

In a press release, the astronomers write that the asteroid belt around Fomalhaut is both larger and more complex than the Kuiper Belt that orbits our own star, the Sun:

"But to their surprise, they found that the dusty structures are much more complex than the asteroid and Kuiper dust belts of our Solar System. Overall, there are three nested belts extending out to 23 billion kilometers from the star — that’s 150 times the distance of Earth from the Sun. The scale of the outermost belt is roughly twice the scale of our Solar System’s Kuiper Belt of small bodies and cold dust beyond Neptune. The inner belts — which had never been seen before — were revealed by Webb for the first time."

Astronomers suspect that the structure of the belt has been influenced by undiscovered planets

So far, astronomers have not been able to detect any planets around Fomalhaut. However, they suspect that the structure of the asteroid belt around the star is due to the gravity of as-yet-undiscovered planets, in a similar way to how the Kuiper Belt has been influenced by the gravity of Neptune.

Researchers plan to study Fomalhaut more closely to find any planets around the star

To find any planets around Fomalhaut, astronomers will now study images of the star more closely. It is believed that there may be three or more planets around the star that are the size of Uranus and Neptune.

esawebb.org

Science,

James Webb Space Telescope, Fomalhaut, asteroid belt, Kuiper Belt, undiscovered planets