Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thank CTOnews.com netizens soft media Xinyou 1933769 for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, May 9, this is the first time we have seen an infrared image of an asteroid belt outside our solar system. It reveals the real scene around the north gate of the star (Fomalhaut). There are actually three asteroid belts, including two inner asteroid belts (inner belt) that humans have never seen before.

Astronomers used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to capture the warm dust around the Northfall Gate, the first asteroid belt seen outside the solar system through infrared light. Unexpectedly, the dust structure is much more complex than the asteroid belt and Kuiper belt of our solar system.

The star extends out into three nested asteroid belts at a distance of about 23 billion kilometers, or 150 times the distance between Earth and the sun. The outermost asteroid belt is about twice the size of the Kuiper Belt in our solar system, but the latter (small objects outside Neptune) are cold dust.

Webb showed the unprecedented asteroid belt inside Northfall Gate for the first time. They circle this young, hot star. It is worth mentioning that it is the brightest star in the southern Pisces that can be seen with the naked eye, so it is also called Southern Pisces α.

Asteroid belts are debris produced by collisions of large celestial bodies, similar to asteroids and comets, which are generally described as "debris disks / debris disks (debris disks)".

"I would describe Northfall Gate as the prototype of debris disks found elsewhere in our galaxy because its composition is quite similar to that in our own planetary system," says Andrs G á sp á r of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "by looking at the patterns of these rings. We can actually start sketching what a planetary system should look like-- if we can really take a picture deep enough to see a suspected planet. "

To the best of CTOnews.com 's knowledge, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory, as well as the Atacama large Millimeter Wave / Sub-Millimeter Wave Array (ALMA), have previously taken clear images of the outermost asteroid belt, although they have not found any internal structure. This is also the first time that Weber has identified the inner band of the cluster with infrared light.

Hubble, Alma and Weber are going to join forces to take a comprehensive look at the debris disks around many stars. "with Hubble and ALMA, we were able to image a bunch of Kuiper belt analogues, and we already know how the outer disk formed and evolved," said Wolf of the University of Arizona research team. "but we need Weber to let us photograph more than a dozen asteroid belts elsewhere. We can learn as much about the warm areas inside these disks as Hubble and ALMA taught us about the colder outer regions. "

It is reported that the dust ring in Northfall Shimen was discovered by NASA's Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) observation in 1983. Previous long-wave observations, including the submillimeter telescope in Mount Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope and the California Institute of Technology's submillimeter telescope, have also confirmed the existence of the ring.

"these star belts around Northfall Gate are like a suspense novel: where are the planets?" "I think it's easy to think that there might be a very interesting planetary system around this star," said George Rick, another member of the team and head of American science for Webb's mid-infrared instrument (MIRI).

Wolf added. "this structure is very exciting because every time an astronomer looks at the gaps and rings in the disk, they say, 'there may be an embedded planet shaping these rings!'"

In addition, Weber also photographed what G á sp á r called a "large dust cloud", which may be evidence that two original planetary bodies collided in the outer ring. This is different from the characteristics of a suspected planet first discovered by the Hubble telescope in the outer ring in 2008. Subsequent Hubble observations showed that by 2014, the object had disappeared. One reasonable explanation is that this newly discovered feature, as previously discovered, is an expansion cloud of very small dust particles formed by two ice bodies colliding with each other.

The idea of a protoplanetary disk around a star dates back to the late 18th century, when astronomers Immanuel Kant and Pierre Simon Laplace independently proposed the theory that the sun and planets were formed by rotating clouds of gas, which collapsed and flattened under gravity. With the formation of planets and the dissipation of primitive gas in the system, the formation of debris disks is later. They show that small objects such as asteroids are having catastrophic collisions and shattering their surfaces into huge clouds of dust and other debris. Observations of its dust provide unique clues to the structure of exoplanet systems that can delve deep into Earth-sized planets and even asteroids that are too small to be observed alone.

Currently, the team's findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy, and interested users can take a look.

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