Fomalhaut is the brightest maven in the constellation of the Southern Pisces the Fishes and it is the second brightest in the sky when it comes to having a planetary system around it ( after Pollux ) . But the Fomalhaut organisation is still a " work in procession " – it ’s unsure if it has planets but what it surely does have is a lot of stuff get going on . Collisions , cloud , and a broad belt like Sun ’s own Kuiper Belt have been spotted before . A new asteroid belt has now been announced .
By usingJWST ’s mid - infrared pawn ( MIRI ) , researchers have been able-bodied to fix the inner disk of debris around Fomalhaut . This star is 25 light - years from Earth and about 440 million old age old so we are looking at the plastic years of this system . The team know that there was dust and pebble in the inner disk but they did n’t know on the button if this was equivalent to the asteroid belt in the Solar System .
“ We sham it to be an almost identical analog to our Solar System ’s asteroid belt ; it turns out the verity is a turn unlike , ” trail author Dr András Gáspár , from The University of Arizona , Tucson , told IFLScience . “ While the internal edge of the warm disk constituent is located at a thermally equivalent region , it extends much further out . In addition , we resolved a secondary gap in the system , which is very intriguing , as it hints at the bearing of an ice - giant planet in the system at a thermally equivalent distance as Neptune is in our solar system . ”
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Some of the features that JWST was able to reveal. Image Credit: András Gáspár
The Modern observations evoke that there is a misalignment between this saucer andthe Kuiper - bang - corresponding onelocated further out . There are also dust cloud . One was previously mistake for a planet and this work reports a 2nd one which they call the " great dust swarm " . It is believed that planets are already formed around this system but there are also a lot of planetesimal around .
It is an alive system and little perturbations by the satellite onto the swath of debris can direct to collisional cascades . And then a dust swarm is have . It is potential that the Solar System undergo a similar period of mussy activity . There are sure as shooting similarities .
“ We are just starting to untangle the organisation . It seems that the planetary system is still not settle down dynamically . The inner sublunar planet zone is still a mystery story . The outer region seem to be familiar though , with many parallel to the discernible properties of the solar system , ” Dr Gáspár explain to IFLScience .
While the system is provide insights into the early solar system , Fomalhaut is very different from the Sun . It ’s a much brighter and hotter lead , meaning that it will fire through its nuclear fuel more speedily . It has lived about a third of its liveliness already . It has about one billion years left before it become into a red giant .
“ By the time this planetary organisation settle down and possibly enables life to flourish , the central star will have already burn through its atomic fuel and ended its life , ” Dr Gáspár differentiate IFLScience .
The research is print inNature Astronomy .
