JWST Captures Beautiful Photographs of Particles Orbiting Close by Star

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observes a glowing debris disk left over from planet formation around a nearby star called AU Microscopii

go through Leah Crane

The red dwarf star AU Microscopii or AU Mic is surrounded by debris left over from planet formation. James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has photographed this debris disk in unprecedented detail, which will help us understand how planetary systems evolve around small stars.

au microphoneAbout 32 light-years from Earth, there are two known exoplanets — one about 10 times the size of Earth and the other twice the mass of Earth. Both are closer to their small stars than Mercury is to the Sun.

Outside of the orbit of these two worlds, things are chaotic in the AU Mic system. AU Mic is relatively young, about 23 million years old, so the system is also full of leftover planetary building blocks.These so-called planetesimals collide and form giant Dust and Rock Discs. By blocking out the bright light from the star itself, JWST has captured the disk in more detail than ever before. The star in the figure represents the location of the AU Mic, and the dotted line is the area where the JWST blocks light.

Josh Schneider of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said: “This system is one of the few examples of a young star with known exoplanets and a debris disk close enough and bright enough to can be studied holistically using Webb’s uniquely powerful instrument,” said the team leader who took the images statement.

“Our first look at the data was much better than expected. It was more detailed than we expected. It was brighter than we expected. We detected the disk was closer than we expected. We hope that as we dig deeper, there will be more A surprise that we didn’t expect,” Schlieder said.

A deeper study of this image and others planned will help researchers study the evolution of planetary systems, but they also have an even more ambitious goal: to directly observe relatively small and far from their stars. These are difficult to find using other methods, but JWST may be able to find them.

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