In our solar system, we know the asteroid belt is teeming with curious, ancient objects. Now, scientists just peered into another solar system and found twoof these belts in the inner system, along with a third farther out.
Astronomers used the most powerful instrument in space ever deployed, the James Webb Space Telescope, to reveal more rings around the young star Fomalhaut, located relatively close (in space terms) at some 25 light-years away. The research was recently published in the science journal Nature Astronomy.
iRobot Roomba Combo i3+ Self-Emptying Robot Vacuum and Mop—$329.99(List Price $599.99)
Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 10.9" 64GB Wi-Fi Tablet—$178.99(List Price $219.99)
Apple AirPods Pro 2nd Gen With MagSafe USB-C Charging Case—$199.00(List Price $249.00)
Eero 6 Dual-Band Mesh Wi-Fi 6 System (Router + 2 Extenders)—$149.99(List Price $199.99)
Apple Watch Series 9 (GPS, 41mm, Midnight, S/M, Sports Band)—$299.00(List Price $399.00)
Previously, other strong telescopes, like the school bus-sized Hubble, observed Fomalhaut's extremely distant outer ring, which lies 14 billion miles away from the star. Yet Webb, which views a type of light called infrared — light that's invisible to our eyes but a common and potent source of energy — found two inner belts.
"Where Webb really excels is that we're able to physically resolve the thermal glow from dust in those inner regions. So you can see inner belts that we could never see before," Schuyler Wolff, an astronomer at the University of Arizona who worked on the research, said in a statement.
SEE ALSO:Webb telescope just found massive objects that shouldn't exist in deep spaceIn the image below, you can see the three rings.
The James Webb Space Telescope captured three rings around the star Fomalhaut.Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / A. Gáspár (University of Arizona). Image processing: A. Pagan (STScI)The two inner belts around Fomalhaut are rocky, dusty rings, formed by large objects colliding (collisions are common in solar systems, especially younger ones). Yet their stable ring-like structures reveal the existence of other intriguing objects around the star.
"These belts most likely are carved by the gravitational forces produced by unseen planets," NASA explains. As an example, the space agency points out that the gas giant Jupiter "corrals the asteroid belt," as the massive planet keeps the orbits of these space rocks largely locked in place.
Tweet may have been deleted
"The belts around Fomalhaut are kind of a mystery novel: Where are the planets?" George Rieke, an astronomer at the University of Arizona and the U.S. science lead for Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, said in a statement. "I think it's not a very big leap to say there's probably a really interesting planetary system around the star."
"I think it's not a very big leap to say there's probably a really interesting planetary system around the star."
"We definitely didn't expect the more complex structure with the second intermediate belt and then the broader asteroid belt," Wolff added. "That structure is very exciting because any time an astronomer sees a gap and rings in a disk, they say, 'There could be an embedded planet shaping the rings!'"
Webb astronomers will continue peering into solar systems like Fomalhaut, places that will better reveal what other planetary systems in the galaxy are like, and what might exist there.
Tweet may have been deleted
The Webb telescope, a scientific collaboration between NASA, the ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency, is designed to peer into the deepest cosmos and reveal unprecedented insights about the early universe. But it's also peering at intriguing planets in our galaxy, and even the planets in our solar system.
Want more scienceand tech news delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newslettertoday.
Here's how Webb is achieving unparalleled things, and likely will for decades:
Giant mirror: Webb's mirror, which captures light, is over 21 feet across. That's over two and a half times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope's mirror. Capturing more light allows Webb to see more distant, ancient objects. As described above, the telescope is peering at stars and galaxies that formed over 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
"We're going to see the very first stars and galaxies that ever formed," Jean Creighton, an astronomer and the director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, told Mashable in 2021.
Infrared view: Unlike Hubble, which largely views light that's visible to us, Webb is primarily an infrared telescope, meaning it views light in the infrared spectrum. This allows us to see far more of the universe. Infrared has longer wavelengths than visible light, so the light waves more efficiently slip through cosmic clouds; the light doesn't as often collide with and get scattered by these densely packed particles. Ultimately, Webb's infrared eyesight can penetrate places Hubble can't.
"It lifts the veil," said Creighton.
Peering into distant exoplanets: The Webb telescope carries specialized equipment called spectrometersthat will revolutionize our understanding of these far-off worlds. The instruments can decipher what molecules (such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane) exist in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets — be it gas giants or smaller rocky worlds. Webb will look at exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. Who knows what we'll find.
"We might learn things we never thought about," Mercedes López-Morales, an exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian, told Mashable in 2021.
Already, astronomers have successfully found intriguing chemical reactions on a planet 700 light-years away, and the observatory has started looking at one of the most anticipated places in the cosmos: the rocky, Earth-sized planets of the TRAPPIST solar system. What's out there?
TopicsNASA
(责任编辑：焦點)
Cat gets stuck in the most awkward position ever
SanDisk's new iXpand Base charges your phone and backs it up at the same time
Tinder Gold drives app to number one grossing spot on the App Store
Eric Trump doubts CNN will cover his dad's donation after CNN repeatedly covered itHonda's allThis 'sh*tpost' bot makes terrible memes so you don't have to
The internet is awash in trashy memes just waiting for your late-night retweet spree. Why waste prec
...[详细]The 8 best gadgets from Berlin's IFA 2017 technology show
Europe's largest technology show, IFA, kicked off early this week in Berlin. Running until Sept. 6,
...[详细]'Stranger Things' creators: Change your TV settings NOW
Have you ever seen one of your favorite movies playing on a TV in a store and thought to yourself, "
...[详细]
A huge asteroid with an old-fashioned name is passing by Earth today, but don't worry. It means us n
...[详细]SINGAPORE -- Getting stuff done at the bank often involves having to waste part of your day standing
...[详细]Star Wars: Jedi Challenges has made holochess an (augmented) reality
It was one of the most memorable scenes in Star Wars: Episode IV- A New Hope: A droid and a Wookiee
...[详细]Take cover, Australia. It's time to prepare for ungodly magpie swooping season.
There are few sounds more pants-wettingly nightmarish to an Australian in spring than the ungodly wh
...[详细]'GTA Online' is finally getting its very own battle royale game mode
The free "Smuggler's Run" update came to GTA Onlineon Tuesday, and with it was a new way to play tha
...[详细]PlayStation Now game streaming is coming to PC
Sony's PlayStation Now service is launching for Windows PC, meaning subscribers will soon be able to
...[详细]Tinder Gold drives app to number one grossing spot on the App Store
Tinder hit number one as the top grossing app on the App Store for the first time ever, all thanks t
...[详细]Fake news reports from the Newseum are infinitely better than actual news
Star Wars: Jedi Challenges has made holochess an (augmented) reality