All articles tagged with #debris disk
Using JWST’s NIRSpec and follow-up imaging from ESO’s VLT, astronomers detected Beta Pictoris d by its atmospheric spectrum, a third planet in the bright Beta Pictoris system—discovered via spectroscopy rather than direct imaging and independently confirmed, highlighting a new way to find worlds hidden in dusty disks.
Astronomers observed a rare planetary smash around Gaia20ehk, about 11,000 light-years away, inferred from dips in visible light paired with a surge in infrared as a hot debris cloud occludes the star—providing a rare real-time glimpse of a planet-formation catastrophe similar to how Earth's Moon formed.
Astronomers analyzing Gaia20ehk, a sun-like star about 11,000 light-years away, observed erratic dimming in visible light with a simultaneous infrared brightening, consistent with a violent collision between two planets that produced hot dust and debris; the event may resemble the Earth–Moon formation, and Rubin Observatory surveys could reveal many more such collisions to illuminate planetary system evolution.
A Sun-like star J0705+0612 dramatically dimmed between September 2024 and May 2025 due to a giant, metal-rich cloud about 1.2 billion miles from the star. The cloud appears bound to a distant companion with a few Jupiter masses—potentially a brown dwarf, giant planet, or low-mass star—carrying a circumsecondary or circumplanetary disk. Gas moves with winds of metals such as calcium and iron, measured with the GHOST spectrograph, indicating a dynamic debris disk around the companion. The star is ~3,000 light-years away, and infrared excess suggests a disk in an older system, implying a late-stage collision may have produced the cloud. This rare observation shows mature planetary systems can experience dramatic, disk-driven obscurations.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope discovered a large debris disk around the nearby M-dwarf star TWA 20, providing new insights into planetary system evolution and demonstrating JWST's sensitivity to faint, cool debris disks around low-luminosity stars.
Astronomers have observed a white dwarf star, LSPM J0207+3331, actively tearing apart a planetary body, revealing recent accretion of debris rich in Earth-like elements, challenging current understanding of planetary system evolution and suggesting ongoing dynamical processes long after the star's death.
New ALMA observations suggest that a massive, unseen exoplanet is warping the debris disk around the young star Fomalhaut, with the disk's eccentricity varying with distance, indicating complex planet-disk interactions. The findings support the presence of a planet between 70-115 au from the star, although it has not yet been directly detected.
New high-resolution ALMA images of Fomalhaut's debris disk reveal a decreasing eccentricity with distance from the star, suggesting the presence of an unseen planet shaping the disk's structure through gravitational influence, providing insights into planetary system evolution.
Astronomers using ALMA have discovered that Fomalhaut's debris disk has a decreasing eccentricity with distance from the star, suggesting the influence of an unseen massive planet that shaped the disk early in its history, providing new insights into planetary system formation.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope confirmed the presence of crystalline water ice in a debris disk around the star HD 181327, providing direct evidence of water ice orbiting a Sun-like star and offering insights into planetary formation processes in other systems.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a new, previously unseen structure in the Beta Pictoris system, located 63 light-years away. The structure, shaped like a cat's tail, extends from the secondary debris disk and is composed of highly porous organic refractory material. The team of astronomers also observed differences in temperature between the two disks, indicating different compositions. The team's preferred model suggests that the cat's tail is the result of a recent dust production event, and its unusual curvature is explained as an optical illusion. These findings were presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society and provide new insights into the complex planetary system of Beta Pictoris.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has observed a debris disk around a white dwarf star, providing insights into the composition and formation of these disks. The observations of the star WD 0145+234 confirm the presence of silicate grains and suggest the presence of carbonates, indicating larger body collisions have contributed to the disk. This finding suggests that white dwarf debris disks may result from similar planetary systems as our own. Further analysis of the data is ongoing to determine the most useful future observations.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured a sharp infrared image of Fomalhaut's debris disk, revealing details never seen before, including a large dust cloud in the outer ring that is possible evidence for colliding bodies, and an inner dust disk and gap likely shaped and maintained by embedded but unseen planets. The debris belts stretch across a gargantuan amount of space, nearly 14 billion miles (23 billion km) from Fomalhaut. The telescope used its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to capture the image.
The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a more complex structure than expected in the debris disk surrounding the star Fomalhaut, including hints of planets forming among the dust and debris. The telescope's powerful infrared instruments caught the glow of dust in the disk's inner regions, revealing the presence of multiple rings and other features. The Fomalhaut system is full of surprises, and astronomers have been looking at it for a long time, with each new telescope revealing something new.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of Fomalhaut, a star located 25 light-years away from Earth, revealing three belts around it, including two inner ones previously unknown. The discovery of these belts could be the strongest indication yet that Fomalhaut has planets, possibly with alien life. The images also reveal a large dust cloud within the outer ring, which may be evidence of a collision between two protoplanets. The study describing the findings has been published in Nature Astronomy.