NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope snaps incredible images of a star 25 light-years away

Incredible new images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal a solar system in more detail than ever before.

Fomalhaut is a star about 25 light-years from Earth with a striking surrounding dust belt stretching 22 billion kilometers.

Scientists have revealed that two inner belts also surround the star, as well as a “Great Cloud of Dust,” thanks to new data from the $10 billion telescope.

Researchers previously thought they had found a planet around Fomalhaut, though it was later believed to be the remnants of a cosmic collision.

However, the discovery of these new belts around Fomalhaut could be the strongest clue yet that there are planets – possibly with extraterrestrial life.

Fomalhaut has three belts – two outer and inner belts previously known and one in the middle newly discovered by JWST

A study describing the findings, led by András Gáspár at the University of Arizona, is published today in Nature Astronomy.

“Fomalhaut appears to be the site of a complex and possibly dynamically active planetary system,” they say.

The 440-million-year-old star has a mass about 1.92 times that of our Sun and is located in the constellation Piscis Austrinus, about 25 light-years away.

Fomalhaut is one of the brightest stars in the night sky — 15 times brighter than our sun — and it’s flashing through hydrogen at such a speed that it will burn up in just a billion years.

We now know that there are three belts around Fomalhaut: two inner ones that were previously unknown and one outer, previously known.

The outer one extends 23 billion kilometers from the star – about 150 times the distance from Earth to our sun.

Fomalhaut’s three belts combine to form a prominent “debris disk” — a surrounding cluster of cosmic dust, pebbles, and other remnants of past rock collisions.

For their study, the experts analyzed images of the debris system around Fomalhaut using JWST’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), which sees light in the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Images of Fomalhaut and its dust disk taken by individual sources, including the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and its predecessor James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

Telescopes such as Hubble and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have previously captured sharp images of the outer belt. However, none of them found any structure in it

The images show the previously known outer ring in more detail, which is considered “analogue” or similar to our own solar system’s Kuiper Belt.

This doughnut-shaped ring of icy objects extends just beyond Neptune’s orbit and is a “region of remnants from the early history of the solar system,” NASA says.

But Fomalhaut’s two newly discovered inner tubes were also revealed for the first time by Webb in infrared light.

This is exciting for astronomers because it points to the possibility that Fomalhaut is analogous to our solar system, and that it could have planets like ours.

‘The ties around Fomalhaut are a kind of mystery novel – where are the planets?’ said study author George Rieke, US science lead for Webb’s MIRI instrument.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal to say there’s probably a very interesting planetary system around the star.”

The “narrow” belt in the center may be guided by the gravitational pull of unseen planets, suggesting the presence of a world in the gap between the belts.

The newly discovered intermediate band is also ‘misaligned’ compared to the outer band and may have been the cause of a previously known collisional dust cloud.

The images also reveal a large dust cloud within the outer ring, which the authors call the “Great Dust Cloud.”

This image shows the star Fomalhaut, which is 15 times brighter than our Sun and is 25 light-years from Earth. It hurtles through hydrogen so fast that it will burn up in just a billion years, 10 percent of our star’s lifetime

The Kuiper Belt is the doughnut-shaped ring of icy objects that extends just beyond Neptune’s orbit in our own solar system (pictured)

The Great Dust Cloud may be evidence of an outer ring collision between two “protoplanets” — large masses of matter in orbit that are believed to be developing into a planet.

So there are either planets evolving around Fomalhaut, or others that have existed for millions of years.

Anyway, according to the experts, Fomalhaut and our own system have striking similarities.

“I would describe Fomalhaut as the archetype of debris disks found elsewhere in our galaxy, because it has components similar to those in our own planetary system,” Gáspár said.

“By looking at the patterns in these rings, we could actually start to do a little sketch of what a planetary system should look like — if we could get a picture deep enough to see the suspected planets.” ‘

High-resolution images have been released from the Fomalhaut debris disk system of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, pictured here in space)

Gáspár said Webb has the ability to finally reveal planets around Fomalhaut thanks to his NIRCam, another one of his instruments.

NIRCam captures light from the edge of the visible through the near-infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

“We also have NIRCam data… which will be published shortly. That’s all I’m going to say,” he told MailOnline.

JWST has proved to be a huge success and a huge step in the advancement of astronomical knowledge since its launch from Earth on Christmas Day 2021.

It unveiled its first set of images in July 2022, including a dying star shrouded in dust and a “cosmic dance” between a group of galaxies.

Other amazing images released last year include the “Pillars of Creation,” Neptune’s rings, a “cartwheel galaxy,” and a stellar nursery known as the Tarantula Nebula.

The James Webb Telescope: NASA’s $10 billion telescope is designed to detect light from the earliest stars and galaxies

The James Webb telescope has been described as a “time machine” that could help unlock the secrets of our universe.

The telescope will be used to look back at the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago, and to observe the sources of stars, exoplanets and even the moons and planets of our solar system.

The massive telescope, which has already cost more than $7bn (£5bn), is thought to be a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope

The James Webb telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of about 40 Kelvin – about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 degrees Celsius).

It is the world’s largest and most powerful orbital space telescope, capable of looking back 100-200 million years after the Big Bang.

The orbiting infrared observatory is designed to be about 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA likes to think of James Webb as a successor to Hubble rather than a replacement, as the two will be working together for a while.

The Hubble telescope was launched on April 24, 1990 via the space shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

It orbits Earth at a speed of about 17,000 mph (27,300 km/h) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles altitude.