Something traumatic must have happened to the Beta Pictoris star system in the 20th century.
It may not seem new, but considering that the universe is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old, the idea that a major cosmic event occurred within the lifetime of a few humans — and could be researched — is of great interest to astronomers.
Beta Pictoris, a nearby star with at least two orbiting planets, is located about 63 light years from Earth in the southern constellation Pictor. This star is visible to the naked eye in the southern sky. A team of scientists used the powerful James Webb Space Telescope, a collaboration between NASA and the European and Canadian Space Agencies, to make the discovery. The infrared space observatory has once again demonstrated its prowess in discovering details previously undetectable by other telescopes.
Webb revealed a new dust feature in Beta Pictoris, coiled like a cat’s tail. Now, the team is trying to find out what causes it.
“While there had been previous observations of land in this wavelength range, they did not have the sensitivity and spatial resolution that we have now with Webb, so they did not detect this feature,” said Isabel Rebollido of the Astrobiology Center in Spain, in a statement.
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Rebollido is the lead author of a new study on these findings, which will be published in the Astronomical Journal.
Previous telescope observations of Beta Pictoris have revealed that the system has two debris disks caused by collisions between asteroids, comets and other small planet-like objects. Planets are thought to form within these disks.
Using computer modeling, the Webb researchers hypothesized that a cosmic event in the last 100 years must have produced the circular dust.
The James Webb Space Telescope captured new images of the Beta Pictoris system.
Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Christopher Stark / Kellen Lawson / Jens Kammerer / Marshall Perrin
“Something happened – like a crash – and a lot of dust was created,” Marshall Perrin, one of the study’s authors, said in a statement. “At first, the dust moved in the same orbital direction as the source, but then it also started to spread out.”
Light from the star pushes the smallest, lightest dust particles away from the star more quickly, Perrin added, while larger grains don’t move as far, creating long dust trails. This trail extends from the southwestern part of the secondary debris disk.
Webb also revealed a temperature difference between the two disks, possibly indicating that they are composed of different substances. In visible light, the material that forms the secondary disk and dust tail appears dark. But with Webb’s infrared vision, the material glows.
Taking into account the brightness of the tail, the team has estimated the amount of dust within it is equivalent to a main belt asteroid spread over a distance of 10 billion miles.
Recent impacts in the system’s debris disk may also explain a feature previously seen by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in 2014. The telescope observed plumes of carbon monoxide near the cat’s tail. Since the star’s radiation should have destroyed carbon monoxide in about a century, the remaining concentrations of this gas could be evidence of a similar event.
If true, the Beta Pictoris system may be more chaotic than researchers think.
2024-01-14 13:19:19
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