“You could hide Jupiters in there, all over the place, and nobody would know,” Bruce Macintosh, director of the University of California Observatories who was not involved with the study, tells the New York Times’ Robin George Andrews.
Unfortunately, Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which was used for this study, and its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) can’t be much help in finding them: Any planets in Fomalhaut’s solar system would likely be too cold to be detected using infrared technology because of where the star is at in its life cycle. “I think it’s not a very big leap to say there’s probably a really interesting planetary system around the star.” science lead for Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument ( MIRI), says in the statement. “The belts around Fomalhaut are kind of a mystery novel: Where are the planets?” George Rieke, a team member and U.S.
The nested rings of dust extend about 14 billion miles from the star-roughly 150 times the distance between Earth and the sun-and they’re much more complex than the familiar asteroid and Kuiper belts of our solar system. Webb’s discovery of separate rings, published Monday in Nature Astronomy, has fueled hopes for finding planets around Fomalhaut. “Any time an astronomer sees a gap and rings in a disc, they say, ‘There could be an embedded planet shaping the rings,’” says Schuyler Wolff, a member of the study team and an astronomer at the University of Arizona, in a statement. While other telescopes had previously photographed one ring around the star, Webb used its infrared capabilities to reveal two more rings nearer to Fomalhaut-a cosmic surprise for the researchers.Įach of the three rings is an asteroid belt-with space dust, asteroids and fragments of ruined planets-and the gaps between them are a strong indicator that as-yet undiscovered worlds could be shifting the debris with their gravity. The James Webb Space Telescope has imaged the first asteroid belt found outside our solar system-and discovered it may hold evidence of hidden planets.Īstronomers focused the high-tech observatory on Fomalhaut, a nearby young star in a solar system that, though similar to ours, is much more chaotic.
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