“New NASA Images of Fomalhaut and the Solar System’s Great Dust Cloud Revealed by James Webb Space Telescope”

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA—Stunning new images from the United States Space Agency’s (NASA) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal solar system in more detail than before. In the pictures there is Fomalhaut and ‘Awan Debu Besar’ or ‘Great Dust Cloud’.

Reported from Daily MailWednesday (10/5/2023), Fomalhaut is a star about 25 light years from Earth with a conspicuous belt of dust around it that stretches for 14 billion miles or 22,530,816,000 km.

Scientists have revealed that the two deepest belts also surround the star, as well as the ‘Great Dust Cloud’. This is thanks to new data from Webb.

Researchers previously thought they had found a planet around Fomalhaut, though it was later deemed to be the remnants of a cosmic collision. However, the detection of this new belt around Fomalhaut could be the strongest indication yet that it does have planets—perhaps with alien life.

This 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. There are three belts around Fomalhaut, namely two previously unknown inner belts and one outer belt, previously known.

The outermost extends up to 23 billion kilometers from the star. This is about 150 times Earth’s distance from our sun. The three Fomalhaut belts together form a prominent ‘debris disc’. These debris disks are clusters of cosmic dust, gravel, and other remains from past rock collisions.

Meanwhile, the Great Dust Cloud may be evidence of a collision that occurred in the outer ring between the two ‘protoplanets’. Protoplanets are large bodies of matter in orbits that are thought to develop into planets.

However Fomalhaut and the Earth system itself have striking similarities, experts say. “I would describe Fomalhaut as an archetype of debris disks found elsewhere in our galaxy, because it has components similar to those we have in our own planetary system,” said Andras Gaspar at the University of Arizona, USA.

“By looking at the patterns in these rings, we can actually start to make small sketches of what a planetary system should look like – if we can actually take pictures deep enough to see the suspected planets.”

Apart from that, Gaspar said Webb did have the ability to reveal planets around Fomalhaut thanks to one of his instruments, NIRCam. NIRCam captures light from the visible edge of the near-infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. “We also have NIRCAM data … which will be published soon. That’s all I’ll say,” he told MailOnline.